Land with the thud of a body dropped onto a beanbag chair, back in the 1970s where everything and nothing happened all at once.

Wedged between the aspirations of the 1960s and the cynicism of the 1980s, Jensen Coaxials pounding until they blow, Leo Kraft and his fellow Nothing Brothers stagger around suburban NY in search of something. Simultaneously overparented and unseen, Leo finds inspiration first in Heavy Metal, then in his Grandfather’s Bronx-fleeing generation and a former hippy sleepover camp, where he feels seen for the first time. The reader sees the 1970s through the bleary eyes of teens who haunt record stores, attend stadium shows, sit in gas lines, fight with tribal ferocity over music loyalty. They ridicule and mock everything around them, until they are left with only one thing to mock, themselves.

In the Nothing Brothers, Rosen recreates a gripping real-time depiction of growing up and through the 1970s, transcending the bell-bottom centered nostalgic treatment of this lost decade allowing the reader their own glimpse into the connection between that generational failure and the world we live in today.