by Jamie K. McCallum ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 2020
A sobering analysis of quasi-Orwellian tactics that permeate American work life.
A sociologist warns that too many Americans are overworked or subject to soul-crushing tactics such as real-time electronic surveillance by their employers.
McCallum may be the only social scientist who has worked as a longshoreman on the Seattle docks and marched in a picket line with the Exotic Dancers Union at the Lusty Lady peep show in San Francisco. Drawing on such colorful experiences as well as deep scholarly research, he makes the compelling argument that Americans are losing control of their work time. For generations, Americans saw hard work as a means to upward mobility, with strong unions to protect wages and hours and employers who managed workers’ time by adopting the ideas of efficiency experts like Frederick Winslow Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. That changed beginning in the 1970s. As union power waned and wages fell or stagnated, a new idea took hold: Work was good for you. What mattered was following your “passion,” not decent wages or hours. At the same time, new electronic tools allowed companies to manipulate workers’ time in ways that had especially harsh consequences for low-wage earners, including giggers and taskers like Uber drivers and Instacart shoppers, who were often left with too much or too little work time or unstable schedules. McCallum describes giant screens at Disneyland that showed workers’ names in real time—and who was (and wasn’t) meeting productivity goals—and a scheduling algorithm at Target (“Walmart for liberals”) that doles out shifts that can vary so much, employees can’t arrange child care or supplement meager pay with second jobs. Archcapitalists may be put off by the socialist-inflected remedies McCallum proposes, but few will disagree with his conclusion: “Free time is an objective good in and of itself, and workers clearly deserve more than they’re currently getting.”
A sobering analysis of quasi-Orwellian tactics that permeate American work life.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5416-1834-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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by Walter Isaacson with adapted by Sarah Durand
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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