American adolescents are not the only ones who have a tough time making the tumultuous transition from childhood to adulthood. Nearly all societies describe this period as filled with challenges, crucial decisions and important experiences.

To compare adolescent development worldwide and to look at the issues of adolescence with a universal perspective, the new book Social Problems and Social Contexts in Adolescence: Perspectives Across Boundaries (Aldine de Gruyter, 1996, $24.95) brings together a series of scholarly papers from seven countries on adolescent issues. The book is edited by Stephen Hamilton, professor and chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Cornell University, and Klaus Hurrelmann, professor and dean of the faculty for health sciences, University of Bielefeld, Germany.

The first section of the 299-page, 13-chapter book, "Theoretical Approaches to Adolescent Development in Context," focuses on the global perspective of adolescent development, a sociological view of the social world of adolescents, a social psychological study of youth and a psychosocial analysis of adolescent identity. The second section, "Social Networks and Social Support," looks at the roles of significant others in the lives of adolescents and includes a chapter by Hamilton on mentors in the lives of adolescents. The final section, "Problem Behavior and Problematic Environments," focuses on adolescent behavior in view of personality, perceived life changes, gender, age, educational level, war and other dangerous environments, and includes a chapter on how youth cope with dangerous environments by James Garbarino, director of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell.

"Adolescence has both universal and culturally determined components, and these papers reveal both similarities and differences in adolescent development in the U.S. and in other countries," said Hamilton, also director of the Cornell Youth and Work Program in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, the only university research-based youth apprenticeship program in the country. "This book, which is an international collaboration in every sense, discusses adolescent phenomena and research in other parts of the world and encourages scholars to reach beyond the United States in their own research."