Doing nothing : a history of loafers, loungers, slackers, and bums in America

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Bibliographic Information

Doing nothing : a history of loafers, loungers, slackers, and bums in America

Tom Lutz

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007

  • : pbk

Available at  / 4 libraries

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Note

"Published in 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. First paperback edition, 2007"--T.p. verso

Includes bibliographical references (p. [321]-354) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Couch potatoes, goof-offs, freeloaders, good-for-nothings, loafers, and loungers: ever since the Industrial Revolution, when the work ethic as we know it was formed, there has been a chorus of slackers ridiculing and lampooning the pretensions of hardworking respectability. Whenever the world of labor changes in significant ways, the pulpits, politicians, and pedagogues ring with exhortations of the value of work, and the slackers answer with a strenuous call of their own: "To do nothing," as Oscar Wilde said, "is the most difficult thing in the world." Moving with verve and wit through a series of case studies that illuminate the changing place of leisure in the American republic, Doing Nothing revises the way we understand slackers and work itself.

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