Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year

A sweeping new history of the changing meaning of work in the United States, from Horatio Alger to Instagram influencers.

How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Now, it's not enough for a worker to be reliable; they are also increasingly expected to show initiative, creating new opportunities for themselves and their employer. Our culture of work today is more demanding than ever, even though workers haven...