Saving Time
The New York Times bestseller
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- €8.99
Publisher Description
**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
'To read it is ... to experience how freedom might feel' Oliver Burkeman
'The visionary author of How to Do Nothing returns ... Expect to feel changed by this radical way of seeing' Esquire
We're living on the wrong clock. And it's destroying us.
Our life is dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside. It wasn't devised for people, but for profit. We need to embrace a whole new concept of time: one that gives us and our planet a brighter future.
In Saving Time, Jenny Odell, bestselling author of How to Do Nothing, examines how we got to the point where time became money. Taking inspiration from the pre-industrial, ecological and geological rhythms of our world, she offers us radical new models to live by that make a more humane, more hopeful existence seem possible.
Now is our moment to rethink. And if we do, time might just save us.
'An inimitable gift' Jia Tolentino
'One of the most important books I've read in my life' Ed Yong
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Odell follows up How to Do Nothing with an electric call to reject the quantitative view of time in favor of a more expansive, less linear understanding that fosters interpersonal connection and social and ecological justice. Arguing that "an overemphasis on fungible time upholds an impoverished view of what time and labor are," Odell finds the historical origins of this perspective in the Protestant work ethic and scientific time management principles promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which have evolved into technologies intended to speed up and surveil workers. She criticizes market-based and individualist solutions to the shared problem of limited time, arguing that collective, policy-based approaches are needed to target structural injustices that fuel burnout and disempowerment. Instead of "hoarding" time, Odell advises, one should "garden" it by creating relationships of mutual aid and understanding and fostering meaningful connections and experiences. Heady sections on "recover the contingencies of the past and the present" are interleaved with lyrical observations about natural and man-made environments in San Francisco's Bay Area. Throughout, Odell encourages readers to resist "declinism," which forecloses action by taking a terrible future for granted, and fully inhabit the present as the moment between past and future where change can happen. This is a moving and provocative game changer.
