The flamboyantly tailored zoot suit, with its wide shoulders, cinched waist, and ballooning trousers, was one of the most outlandish fashions of the 1940s. Worn primarily (though not exclusively) by African American and Mexican American youth, it was emblematic of a culture that emphasized style, pleasure and recreation, which blurred racial boundaries, and which developed amid the leisure and consumer opportunities afforded by the wartime economy. For those in authority, however, it symbolized juvenile delinquency and the threat of home-front instability, and was a fad that needed to be repressed. In this excellent book, Luis Alvarez explores the significance of zoot culture in the United States, and places it into a wider context of war-related social, economic and political change. Facing restricted access to the jobs created in the wartime economy and continued racist discrimination, Alvarez argues that African American and Mexican American youth used style and popular culture to challenge the status quo and assert their own distinctive identities. While he is careful not to ascribe a single meaning to the zoot and recognises the multiplicity of zoot-suiters' experiences, he argues that style was just one way by which non-white youth questioned dominant ideas of American identity and claimed personal dignity in a society that denied them full rights at home yet encouraged them to fight for freedom abroad. Alvarez also points out the contradiction inherent in the zoot-suiters' actions. While they resisted segregation and challenged constrictive notions of race and gender on one level, the relationship between zoot-suiters reinforced traditional gender roles and, moreover, “zoot suiter consumption fueled the wartime economy that helped alienate them to begin with” (11). The questions that this poses lie at the heart of this study.

Influenced by the classic accounts of youth subcultures written during the 1970s by members of the Birmingham School, Alvarez's work is a notable contribution to the literature on subcultures, style and resistance. Moreover, the zoot culture it describes is a precursor to the consumption-driven youth culture of later in the century. Alvarez recognizes the power of consumption as an expressive, sometimes subversive, force, and this study can be placed alongside work that investigates the origins of youth culture and the history of consumption. When describing changes to the wartime economy or the series of race riots that rocked American cities during 1943, Alvarez pulls together an impressive range of source material, notably press reports, government papers, and other archival sources, but the book fizzes into life in the sections that discuss the intricacies of zoot fashion, style, music and dance. These rely heavily on oral history, in particular a series of in-depth interviews with former zoot-suiters (including the author's great uncle), to capture the voices of those involved, something often missing from previous scholarship on zoot culture. The result is a book that is likely to become a defining work on the subject and will become required reading for anyone interested in the history of youth style in America.