Journalist and pop culture critic James Sullivan tells the fascinating story of this amazing garment, from its humble utilitarian origins to its ubiquitous presence in the twenty-first-century global economy. Beginning with the appearance of front-buckled denim pants in nineteenth-century America, Sullivan untangles the legends surrounding the origin of jeans and traces their adoption as work clothing in the West. Jeans then follows their mass production by regional entrepreneurs including San Francisco's legendary Levi Strauss, their widespread adoption as youth clothing and westernwear in the twentieth century, and their popularization around the world. Along the way, Sullivan explores jeans culture, from James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe's early evangelization of jeans for a new generation to their subsequent appearances on beatniks, hippies, disco queens, and dot-com millionaires as styles and subcultures evolved.