"Growing up has never felt more fraught. Options seem endless but each choice carries weight; no one dares give advice and role models are thin on the ground. Luckily, Anna Moreland and Thomas W. Smith are willing to step into the breach ― The Young Adult Playbook is warm and wise; its advice is straightforward and actionable. This is the book I wish I'd read before graduation."―Christine Emba, author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation and columnist at The Atlantic

"Do you want to find meaning at work and escape the 'achievement trap'? To reclaim rest amidst our culture's obsession with busyness? To build relationships that lead to deep friendships and perhaps even to love? The Young Adult Playbook can help. With engaging insights, imaginative exercises, and the realistic counsel of wise and caring teachers, Anna B. Moreland and Thomas W. Smith offer valuable advice for young adults seeking a life of meaning and purpose."―Michael Lamb, F.M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, Wake Forest University

"Success. Happiness. Love. Every young person wants these things, and for generations, innumerable self-help manuals have promised to deliver, only to fail spectacularly. Far from a problem of overreach, however, the genre actually suffers from an acute failure of nerve. Too many such tomes promise to coach budding adults on effective procedural behavior, without ever having the courage to articulate a substantive vision of what success actually means. While this tendency may have been emblematic of a zeitgeist that prized subjectivity uber alles, things are changing for today's youth. The new generation is hungry for purpose―for all the habits of highly effective people to mean something. They will find their answer in the Young Adult Playbook, a superb, genre-defining book that articulates not only the how, but the what and the why for living a life that is both great and good"―Rabbi Dr. Ari Lamm, co-founder and President of SoulShop Studio

"In university now and, as far into the future as we can see, college-aged students are presented with an array of bewildering features. COVID took its toll on their social development. They are addicted to their phones, fearful of missing something. They admit to being lonely, unsure, and find it difficult to discipline themselves to come regularly to even those things they enjoy or feel responsible for. GPS tells them how to get from A to B, but they don't know where to start or where to drop the pin. They need a road map, an old-fashioned guide for making decisions about the journey ahead. This book tells them how to prepare for and follow a road map, a journey of their own creation. The explicit message is 'we believe in you.' An implicit assumption is that a faith tradition can be an invaluable companion on this pilgrimage."―Michael J. Garanzini, SJ, President, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities

"In this engaging guide, readers will find out how to live like it matters, and they'll find out why it absolutely, positively does."―Meg Jay, author of The Twentysomething Treatment and The Defining Decade

Anna Moreland is the Anne Quinn Welsh Endowed Chair and Director of the Villanova University Honors Program. Thomas W. Smith is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, The Catholic University of America.