Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

COLD NEW WORLD:

GROWING UP IN A HARDER COUNTRY

By William Finnegan

Random House, $26

Journalist William Finnegan offers four vivid portraits of young, impoverished Americans, including a drug dealer in New Haven, Conn.; a gang member in Yakima Valley, Wash.; a group of skinheads in Antelope Valley, Calif.; and residents of a town that undergoes a federal drug raid in East Texas. Finnegan draws no facile conclusions about the future of today’s youth, but simply allows his character portrayals to raise troubling questions.