No More Work - by James Livingston (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For centuries we've believed that work was where you learned discipline, initiative, honesty, self-reliance--in a word, character. A job was also, and not incidentally, the source of your income: if you didn't work, you didn't eat, or else you must be stealing from someone. According to such pieties, if you truly worked hard, you could earn your way and maybe even make something of yourself. In recent decades, through everyday experience, these beliefs have proven spectacularly false. Here, James Livingston explains why Americans still cling to work as a solution rather than a problem, resulting in a witty, stirring denunciation of the way we have always thought about why we labor. No More Work exhorts us to imagine a new way of finding meaning, character, and sustenance beyond our workaday world.

Review Quotes

"Livingston is at his most persuasive as a historian. . . . No More Work seek[s] to solve the problem of work through resource redistribution rather than by inviting readers to hack their own lives."--Public Books

"Pack[s] a verbal blow against all those--on the Right and the Left--who continue to kneel in adoration in the Chapel of Work."--Dissident Voices

"Unrivaled . . . in its audacity and brashness, all in a delightfully amusing little essay that is guaranteed to delight undergrads and provoke them to question their individual collective future. Highly recommended."--CHOICE

About the Author

James Livingston is professor of history at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the author of five other books on topics ranging from the Federal Reserve System to South Park.