Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was an informative book that reveals the culture acceptance and praise for the long work week. The author uses personal stories, data and opinion to stress the detriment of working long hours and its affects on society. Towards the end he proposes provocative, solutions that very often are viewed as socialist ideals. Overall, a well written novel with very interesting views.

In the spirit of accomplishing more each day--more work, more chores, more errands, more self-care--I've read countless books on time management. The one that changed my relationship with work more than any other, though, was not about doing more, but about doing less. In Do Nothing (Harmony, $25), Celeste Headlee invites readers to reconsider the role of rest in work, all while placing our modern understanding of work in its historical context. We must rest, she argues, or we burn out.

This concept of burnout is the crux of Anne Helen Peterson's Can't Even (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26), which expands on her viral Buzzfeed article. In Worked Over (Basic Books, $28), sociologist Jamie McCallum draws important connections between this culture of burnout and constant work with persistent inequalities in American society. When I picked up Wintering (Riverhead, $24) last month, I encountered yet again these themes of work and rest and burnout, woven into Katherine May's story of her own forced rest and what it taught her about the nature of her work.

These books about the culture of work (and rest) have me thinking in news ways about how I relate to my own daily work in the nonprofit sector, how I show up and how in turn I encourage others to show up. To that end, my first planned book for the new year is You Belong (HarperOne, $27.99), in which meditation expert Sebene Selassie explores how our sense of belonging and connection shapes the world we live in. Before I start that work, however, I will take time to rest on these shortest days of the year and embrace that I am--and we all are--more than what we can produce in a given day. As we stare down the uncertainty of a new year in this strange time, I invite you to do the same.

It doesn't take a genius to know that the American labor system is fundamentally broken. It seems that no one is happy, but the reasons behind this unhappiness and insecurity come from a variety of reasons, not just one thing that might seem "easy" to solve. This book will change the way you think about jobs and labor in the U.S., laying out the roots of why Americans have this uniquely twisted attitude toward work, Taylorism and business changes that have spiraled out of control, policy that hasn't kept up with the changing nature of work, and how this whole environment has screwed everyone over.

McCallum describes scenarios that are symptoms of our labor crisis:
- Workers having to juggle multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, even workers in typically skilled or education positions like nurses and teachers
- Workers struggling for more hours and not getting enough to make ends meet
- Workers having trouble balancing home responsibilities (eg. elder care, child care) because of "just-in-time" shift scheduling
- High earners working upwards of 80 hour weeks and feeling chronically overworked despite making high wages

This book is an excellent companion to one of my favorites books from 2019: On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. Worked Over and On the Clock both address the plagues of low-wage work, with Worked Over going a bit farther to talk about how even high earners suffer from chronic overwork. Reading these two books in tandem is powerful, however, because Worked Over is more of an academic or objective text, whereas On the Clock is sort of a memoir/biography, detailing Emily Guendelsberger's lived experience working in three different but equally horrible low-wage jobs, humanizing these positions much more than short anecdotes can.

I highly, highly recommend this to anyone interested in labor and working-class reforms - this is a must read for our modern day labor market. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley!

In short, this book saved me. I was so steeped in the cultural meaning of work that I did not realize it had become all I had. I work more than sixty hours a week, and thought that this was defining me - making me worthy of legacy - but it was only and simply ruining my mental health. I did not even consider myself the 'workaholic' in my peer circle; I had convinced myself I was more committed to my goals than them. It's hard not to ruminate about this book when you are away from it, it's hard not to be deeply unsettled by the status quo presented here.

This book uses three main perspectives to look at the cultural approaches to work, time and meaning through the use of well-timed anecdotes and thorough research. The structure most particularly sets me at ease in the way that it lays out how things will be presented so that we can flow seamlessly from one chapter to the next without any surprise about what is coming - not one sentence feels out of place. While the structure gently guides us through the facets of this topic, there are themes (time, justice, meaning) woven through like thread. These come up continuously and poignantly enough that we as readers are left to create our own ideas about them long after this book has been closed. The main theme, in any journalistic work of nonfiction, is pervasive hope. This book is hopeful but also shows the cynical irony of hope in an economy built to destroy, and I enjoy that balance. The authour is quite good at playing his own devil's advocate.

Cool topics that I have to list in point-form or else I will recreate the book. If anyone else has read it PLEASE discuss these with me:

- the problem of leisure and how we were once at risk of this becoming the most perplexing problem of the future
- neoliberalism (not overly discussed in here but mentioned. I had to do a lot of side Googling to understand this concept fully).
- peripatetic lifestyles and general precarity
- monospony
- long hours at hard labour as a moral attitude
- Have fun at work and thus get confused about what is actually fun! Yay!
- Books I want to read now: Counterproductive by Melissa Gregg and Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich


In general, the book is sprinkled with modern solutions to this problem that do, and could more thoroughly, exist.

(Unable to connect directly to book ISBN but this review has been posted on my Goodreads as well.)

Having read other well-known books about America’s problematic work culture, like Nickel and Dimed, I decided to pick this book up to read about the more recent issues that have come to the forefront as America’s gig economy has grown over the past decade. Worked Over covers the history of work and employee management by employers, the gains and losses that American employees have experienced in job quality over the past several decades, and the current state of the job market along with the organized movement to improve its function and outcomes.

Overall, the topics covered in Worked Over represent most of the key issues that underlie America’s job market and the various socioeconomic and sociocultural issues that have sprung from the ever-increasing inequality between business executives and the workers who are trying to get by. The book covers the history of the effort by employers to improve employee productivity and carries through to the effort by employees to reduce their work hours and increase pay and benefits throughout the twentieth century. The book then discusses the erosion of all the gains by workers, due largely to the decline of unions and the big business focus on profit over everything else.

In terms of information, the book delivers some excellent lessons that are critical to understanding how America’s work culture degraded into its current state, but I did think the book had a few flaws. The text was a tad dense for my taste and some of the topics discussed drifted away from the main themes of the book at times, causing me to lose interest in certain sections. I thought the book could’ve been a bit shorter and still delivered the same impact in terms of its core ideas.

Overall, however, I thought Worked Over was a decent overview of the main problems facing the working class in modern America.

This is a book that will make you truly mad at the state of work in the US. McCallum gives the problem of overwork a human face, starting with the story of Maria Fernandes, who worked shifts at 3 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants to pay her bills before her death. His expert intertwining of statistics and trends with heartbreaking human stories made it hard to put this book down. While he focuses primarily on the problems of individuals working low-income jobs, he also discusses overwork among elite white-collar professionals who feel they have to prove their value through total hours worked.

McCallum’s deep look at the subject and his suggestions for how to reshape capitalism to make it work for workers are definitely worth a read. I would recommend this book to another interested in labor history, sociology, inequality, and automation.

Thank you to Perseus Books/Basic Books for providing an ARC on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"Worked Over" by Jamie McCallum is a nonfiction work about the history and current state of work and employment in America. He highlights how many factors like low wages, inconsistent scheduling, scheduling algorithms, and the physical demands of a work environment (think Amazon warehouses) burden low-wage workers. Unfortunately, because wages are so low, low-wage workers have no choice but to continue to put up with all the above factors while often working the same hours as a more highly paid white-collar workers. That being said, McCallum points out that office environments have cultivated a feeling among white-collar employees that they also must work hours for fear of not feeling like they can prove themselves if they work more "realistic" hours. McCallum offers a meaningful analysis about how American society has moved into the sphere of constant overwork, and he provides some great ideas for how to make work life more balanced and bearable for all people. As he points out, we need time to fulfill our civic duties! This is a really interesting read that will make you reflect on your own participation in the world of being "Worked Over."

Worked over a look at why people are working long hours .A fascinating look at the role of work in our lives .Well written informative interesting .A book that will enlighten all of us who can’t slow down.#netgalley#persusbooks

I absolutely loved this book! I'm always interested in learning about the history and culture of work in our countryy, which is the richest in the world but yet wages have been stagnant since the 1970s and we work more hours now than ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This book provides all of the history and sociological insight into how leisure died out in the 1990s and was replaced with the glorification of business.

Interesting book on working. Or over worked, as much of us are. Working Over is perfect for this time. Must read!!

Thanks to author,publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.