One Day I'll Work for Myself

The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America

Benjamin C. Waterhouse (UNC–Chapel Hill)

$49.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

WW Norton & Co
08 March 2024

Entrepreneurship

"""One day I'll work for myself."" Perhaps you've heard some version of that phrase from friends, colleagues, family members-perhaps you've said it yourself. If so, you're not alone. The spirit of entrepreneurship runs deep in American culture and history, in the films we watch and the books we read, in our political rhetoric, and in the music piping through our speakers.

What makes the dream of self-employment so alluring, so pervasive in today's world? Benjamin C. Waterhouse offers a provocative argument: the modern cult of the hustle is a direct consequence of economic failures-bad jobs, stagnant wages, and inequality-since the 1970s. With original research, Waterhouse traces a new narrative history of business in America, populated with vivid characters-from the activists, academics, and work-from-home gurus who hailed business ownership as our economic salvation to the upstarts who took the plunge. We meet, among others, a consultant who quits his job and launches a wildly popular beer company, a department store saleswoman who founds a plus-size bra business on the Internet, and an Indian immigrant in Texas who flees the corporate world to open a motel. Some flourish; some squeak by. Some fail.

As Waterhouse shows, the go-it-alone movement that began in the 1970s laid the political and cultural groundwork for today's gig economy and its ethos: everyone should be their own boss. While some people find success in that world, countless others are left bouncing from gig to gig-exploited, underpaid, or conned by get-rich-quick scams. And our politics doesn't know how to respond.

Accessible, fast-paced, and eye-opening, One Day I'll Work for Myself offers a fresh, insightful cultural history of the U.S. economy from the perspective of the people within it, asking urgent questions about why we're clinging to old strategies for progress-and at what cost."

By: Benjamin C. Waterhouse (UNC–Chapel Hill)
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 525g
ISBN: 9780393868210
ISBN 10: 0393868214
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 08 March 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Benjamin C. Waterhouse is the author of Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA and The Land of Enterprise: A Business History of the United States. He is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews for One Day I'll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America

"Waterhouse's economical storytelling keeps the history informative yet approachable, and his searing analysis sheds light on how America's boot-strapping mythology has hoodwinked workers. . . . Readers will want to check this out before quitting their day job.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" A new and unique perspective on an important topic: how the ideal of self-employment became an American ideology that has led so many of us, from individual entrepreneurs to policymakers, astray. Fun and often hilarious, the book draws together seemingly disparate stories, from Jay-Z's philosophy of the hustle to work-from-home gurus, into an organic whole and sheds new light on our widespread dreams of going it alone.--Lee Vinsel, associate professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech and coauthor of The Innovation Delusion"