Armchair sociologists often remark that the culture of the late 20th century has been reduced to a fixed repertoire of genres from which American young people now draw their wardrobes and styles. Themed dances refer to the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and, increasingly, the 1990s. Many adolescents can tell you which decade they prefer, and which they loathe. DJ battles pit songs from 1979 against the 1981 batch.

Adam Langer’s overtly nostalgic novels do the work of Balzac and VH1 in a single blow. His first, “Crossing California,” published last summer, followed a matrix of Jewish Chicagoans through the 444 days of the Iran hostage crisis. The sequel, “The Washington Story” (Riverhead, 416 pages, $24.95), brings them from 1982 all the way to 1987. But to Mr. Langer’s credit, he does not sink entirely into calendar games.

The back of each novel is graced with a longish glossary of setting-specific terms; most pertain either to Yiddish expressions, forgotten rock songs, and local Chicago politics. The selection is provocative, not at all objective, but written as if by a slightly coy older brother, who for some conceited reason has annotated his teenage years for the benefit of his younger brother:

Pez. Pastel-colored small candies most noteworthy for their amusing dispensers.

Pinners. A game involving whipping a rubber ball at the stoop of a house and attempting to catch it.

Piven, Frances Fox and Richard Cloward. Political scientists and authors of seminal text, “Poor People’s Movements.”

Plant, Robert. Lead singer of Led Zeppelin, fond of showing off his pupik.

Fans of Mr. Langer’s books will already be familiar with most of these terms and find the definitions piquant. These glossaries create an unusual relationship between author and reader, suggesting that the books are time capsules. Mr. Langer’s distinctive prose style also tends to telescope the past.

On this particular Monday in the Wasserstrom living room, Wes revealed that he and Rae-Ann had fought once again, this time because he hadn’t said grace over the nastyass olive-and-onion sandwiches her mother had made for them. Raie-Ann had refused to give him his sandwich until he thanked the Lord for this “bountiful feast” – he’d snatched the sandwich out of her hand and Rae-Ann had started crying. Jill agreed that relationships were difficult, and that she too felt stifled around Muley, but in light of recent events, she had to be supportive.

At first glance normal, this paragraph works by extreme paraphrase. Dialogue is not set in quotes but embedded in past and then past perfect tense retellings, muting the dramatic dynamic of conversation.

Mr. Langer has written two entire books in the style of the ultra-detailed but still hurried reminiscences of a late-night chat between new roommates. When he tries on the usual authorial stance, slowing time down in order to interject metaphor into summary, the exception is always brief: “Unless, Jill said – she suddenly felt ill, her hands icy, her fingers red and small, in her stomach a feeling of churning emptiness – unless he had made everything up, even the story about ….”

By streamlining his scenes so, Mr. Langer achieves great compactness, and together his two books make an epic. Much of their aesthetic effect is composite, the creation of a taxonomy of growing-up. We observe the self-immolating thug, the stubborn artist, the preppy lesbian, the lower-class nymphomaniac, and so on.

But 800 pages times 10-plus protagonists times eight years equals more crushes, kisses, and affective velleities than many readers will care to internalize. Instead, readers will study them, comparing and contrasting. It is a credit to the author that this lattice of relationships, floating above its colorful social backdrop, is aesthetically convincing.

More significantly, it suggests that, after decades of youth culture, the bildungsroman is increasingly stylish. Readers of Mr. Langer will find probably today’s nostalgic indie rock more complementary than the Nazareth, A-ha, and Romeo Void his text recommends.