Following his bestselling An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education, the former Head Master of Eton, Tony Little continues to widen his perspective in Adolescence: How to Survive It. Addressing parents and educators as well as teenagers, he covers issues much broader than just schooling and tries to break down the barriers between teachers and parents and to tackle the habitual anxieties of parents about their children right through from first days in primary schools to last days in secondary schools. To accomplish this, Little has enlisted the help of Herb Etkin, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, reprising the form of John Cleese and Dr Robin Skinner's celebrated book Families and How to Survive Them.

Adolescence: How to Survive It covers questions on adolescence such as "What is it?", "Who is affected?", "What do the stages of development look like?" and "When does an adolescent require outside help?". The first part of the book sets adolescence in context, before Little and Etkin engage in a series of questions-and-answers to tackle key issues. The final part of the book is a manual for parents, teachers, and teenagers.

With his previous book, the public was astonished by the progressive liberal and innovative views of a headmaster of Eton, allegedly the bastion of privilege and elitism. Now Tony Little and Herb Etkin impart more wisdom in a book which is as anxious to deal with parents' issues as with those of educators.