"Wasted Youth is James Wright's vivid and emphatically unromantic memoir of his late teens and early twenties, when his life derived its meager meaning from consuming drugs and alcohol, dodging authority, and simply staying alive day to day. Relentlessly self-critical, Wright is not looking for pity or even sympathy from his reader. But the reader can't help but extend it anyway, knowing from the evidence of this beautifully written book the great potential that was once in danger of being lost." Richard J. Maiman, author of A Man for all Branches

Coming of age in the social turbulence of the late 60s presented a challenge for the young men of the time. If there was a legitimate rite of passage, the author didn't know about it, and if he did, he wouldn't have done it anyway, preferring to chart his own course into the underworld of change. Wasted Youth is his account of that passage, a tale of survival and slow learning. Told with humor and an eye for absurdity, the memoir follows the author down blind alleys and through close calls, wandering in the darkness of drugs and crime, looking for something he might not recognize if he found it. A personal journey of getting lost and never quite found, the author avoids triumph but discovers something far more meaningful: the path to a place where grief can be felt at the heart of being.