Cool Places explores the contrasting experiences of contemporary youth. The chapters draw on techno music and ecstasy in Germany, clubbing in London, global backpacking and gangs in Santa Cruz and experiences at home of sibling rivalry, loitering on streets and seeking employment. The contributors use these examples to explore representation and resistance and geographical concepts of scale and place in young people's lives. The authors consider how the media has imagined young people as a particular commodity with shared interests how young people resist media stereotypes and create their own independent representations the complex ways that youth cultures are played out across different scales young people's experiences of everyday geographical locations the power of young people to resist adult definitions of their lives and to create new spaces and ways of living. Shane Blackman, Canterbury Christ Church College, UK, Sophie Bowlby, University of Reading, UK, Myrna Margulies Breitbart, Hampshire College, Amherst, USA, Deborah Chambers