Working in the 21st Century
An Oral History of American Work in a Time of Social and Economic Transformation
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
From nurses and teachers to wildland firefighters and funeral directors—an intimate, honest, and illuminating collection of interviews that reveal what it’s like to work in America at this historic and volatile moment in time.
Author Mark Larson sits down with more than one hundred workers from across the socioeconomic spectrum as they share their experiences with work and what it has meant in their lives—the good, the bad, the mundane, and the profound. Doulas, firefighters, chefs, hairstylists, executives, actors, stay-at-home parents, and so many more talk about what they do all day and how it aligns (or doesn't) with what they want to be doing with their lives. The pandemic, the ensuing “Great Resignation,” and the current reckonings with racial justice are among the forces that are now upending and reshaping our longstanding relationships with work. Larson’s interviews display how these forces collide in the lives of average Americans as they tell their own stories with passion, heartbreak, and, ultimately, hope.
Working in the 21st Century asks why we show up, or don’t, to the jobs we’ve chosen, and how the upheaval of the past few years has changed how we perceive the work we do. It will be released to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Studs Terkel's 1974 classic Working.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The American workplace reels from the Covid pandemic, climate change, bigotry, and more in this spirited interview collection inspired by Studs Terkel's Working on its 50th anniversary. Historian Larson (Ensemble) features 101 conversations with "the people who are not often handed a microphone nor called into the spotlight" to get a sense of "what it is like to be you doing this work in these times." A wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service describes the "massive, mega blazes" increasing in frequency because of climate change; a former Wisconsin dairy farmer recounts the economic hardship that led him to sell his cows; an ob-gyn in Illinois details the effects on her practice of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade; a Covid contact tracer in New York notes that she had to cut her "35-minute interview to a 15-minute interview because of the volume of cases"; and a teacher turned short-haul truck driver in South Carolina contends that "the worst day in trucking is better than the best day teaching." Larson covers an impressive range of workers with oft-fascinating anecdotes. Taken all together, however, the voices tend to blend together. Best suited to being leafed through a few sections at a time, this is a comprehensive look at the challenges faced by today's workers.