This book is an homage to the complex world that young people today live in.  The term adolescence was introduced and largely defined in the early 1900s. It took its more recent form that we know it after World War II and the prosperity that it brought to the USA.  Since the introduction of the concept, explorations in other cultural, social and economic contexts have shed new light on the nature of not just adolescence but all of the life span. This books hopes to introduce readers to the complex, multidisciplinary and contextual research conducted in this area of study and the boundaries that mark the different ways in which youth and their lives are shaped by the social and political arrangements they live in.