The teenager has often appeared in culture as an anxious figure,the repository for American dreams and worst nightmares, at once on the brinkof success and imminent failure. Spotlighting the “troubled teen” as a site ofpop cultural, medical, and governmental intervention, Chronic Youthtraces the teenager as a figure through which broad threats to the normativeorder have been negotiated and contained. Examining television, popular novels, science journalism, newmedia, and...