Diary of a Company Man: Losing A Job, Finding A Life

by James S. Kunen

Overview

The funny, insightful, and inspiring story of a 1960s campus radical turned corporate PR man who finds himself, along with his fellow baby boomers, in a place called “Too Young to Retire and Too Old to Hire”

James S. Kunen—author of The Strawberry Statement, an account of the 1968 student uprising at Columbia University—chronicles his adventures on the road to finding meaning in work and life. He traces his evolution from a rebellious youth who sees working as a kind of death, to a laid-off corporate executive who experiences not working as a kind of death, to a reinvented and reinvigorated individual who discovers something important and meaningful to do.

The experience of falling victim to America’s recession-ravaged economy (and the people who run it) leads him along a career path far different from anything he had planned. After years of making a living, Kunen finally learns how to make a life. Diary of a Company Man will be a revelation not only to baby boomers but to young people trying to figure out what to do with their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762770458
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/10/2012
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

James S. Kunen is the author of four previously published titles: The Strawberry Statement, Standard Operating Procedure, How Can You Defend Those People?,and Reckless Disregard .  He worked as a public defender in Washington, D.C., and as a writer and editor at People magazine before assuming the position of director of corporate communications at Time Warner’s headquarters in New York City.  Along the way, he has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Time and other notable publications.  Kunen is currently a teacher of English as a second language for immigrants. He and his family live in Brooklyn.

Read an Excerpt

“In 1968, when I was nineteen, I wrote a book about being nineteen and trying to change the world—or at least find a new way to live in it. It was called The Strawberry Statement, and it gave voice to what a lot of people my age were hoping: that our generation would be different. We wouldn’t care so much about careers, status, and material things. We’d be less greedy, more kind, less alienated, more true to ourselves.. .. Now I find myself at this place called Too Young to Retire and Too Old to Hire, and there’s a huge crowd here, a regular Woodstock, with more arriving all the time. Many of us grudgingly made a deal to sell our time on Earth to the Corporation, only to be informed abrubtly that the Corporation would no longer be buying. How did that happen?”

                                                        —From the Introduction

Editorial Reviews

When I was a teenager, The Strawberry Statement shaped my view of
the world and my place in it. Now James Kunen has done it again, with his
acute, observant, funny and moving story of what's truly important in life.
Diary of a Company Man is timely and timeless—a beautiful piece
of writing and enduring source of inspiration.”

—Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One

From the Publisher