Description
Book SynopsisThe history of leisure time, from the earliest societies to the work-from-home era
Free time, one of life's most precious things, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to doomscrolling on social media for thirty minutes?
Today, despite the promise of modern industrialization, many people experience both a scarcity of free time and a disappointment in it. Free Time offers a broad historical explanation of why our affluent society does not afford more time away from work and why that time is often unsatisfying. Gary S. Cross explores the cultural, social, economic, and political history, especially of the past 250 years to understand the roots of our conceptions of free time and its use. By the end of the nineteenth century, a common expectation was that industrial innovations would lead to a progressive reduction of work time and a subsequent rise in free time devoted to self-developme
Trade Review
A sweeping and thought-provoking evaluation of the history of how people use leisure time, and why these ways often fall short in the present day. -- Peter N. Stearns, author of Time in World History
Free Time sheds light on why so many of us feel our free time is unfulfilling (let alone, scarce). Cross is a truly innovative scholar with remarkable range, and an admirably clear writer who is able to present complex ideas in an accessible way; he deftly addresses issues that are intimately connected to each other but are all too often treated separately. -- Susan Matt, co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter
A gifted stylist, a master researcher, Gary Cross is the leading authority on the most lasting and influential -ism of the twentieth century: consumerism. No one has written with such insight into the origins, evolution, nature, meaning, and appeal of consumer culture. Written in an engaging and highly accessible style, and addressing a topic of widespread public concern with an intellectual seriousness that is missing in works of pop psychology and sociology, Free Time is rich and highly original. -- Steven Mintz, author of New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood
In 1962 Herbert Marcuse wrote that technology “threatens . . . the reversal of the relation between free time and working time . . . [making likely] the possibility of working time becoming marginal . . . . The result would be a radical transvaluation of values . . . . Advanced industrial society is in permanent mobilization against this possibility.” Free Time is a magnificent account of that “mobilization.” His is one of the best and most thorough explanations of why the shorter hours process ended during the 20th century after a century of progress, and why the accompanying expectation of what Walt Whitman called “higher progress” has been nearly forgotten. -- Benjamin Hunnicutt, author of Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream
