Against the backdrop of Obama's 'politics of hope' Giroux critically investigates the well-being and future of America's young people.

Part I Introduction; Introduction; Part II Youth; Chapter 1 War Talk, the Death of the Social, and Disappearing Children; Chapter 2 Hard Lessons; Chapter 3 Commodifying Kids; Chapter 4 Disney, Casino Capitalism, and the Stealing of Childhood Innocence; Chapter 5 Ten Years After Columbine; Chapter 6 Child Beauty Pageants; Part III Race; Chapter 7 Youth and the Myth of a Postracial Society Under Barack Obama; Chapter 8 Disposable Youth in a Suspect Society; Chapter 9 Locked Out and Locked Up; Chapter 10 Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the New Racism; Chapter 11 Children of the Recession; Part IV Democracy; Chapter 12 Beyond Bailouts, Susan Searls Giroux; Chapter 13 Educating Obama; Chapter 14 Beyond the Audacity of Hope; Chapter 15 The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media; Chapter 16 Obama's Tortured Democracy; Part V Education; Chapter 17 Obama and the Promise of Education; Chapter 18 Obama's Embrace of the Corporate Model of Education; Chapter 19 Against the Militarized Academy; Chapter 20 Higher Education in Search of Democracy?; Chapter 21 Obama's Postpartisan Politics and the Crisis of American Education; Chapter 22 Educating the Rest of Us;