Search results for ""Author Ada Calhoun""

When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too? Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked. Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to 'have it all,' Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of their issues being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take 'me-time' or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order. In Why We Can't Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X's predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss - and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.

Read more less

St. Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O’Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted and the Velvet Underground wailed. Ada Calhoun tells the “Fascinating” (Village Voice) many-layered history of the street—from its beginnings as a pear orchard to today’s hipster playground—organised around the pivotal moments when critics declared “St. Marks is dead”. In this “timely, provocative, and stylishly written book.” (The Atlantic), enriched by interviews and rare images, Calhoun profiles iconic characters from W.H. Auden to Abbie Hoffman, from Keith Haring to the Beastie Boys. St. Marks has variously been an elite address, an immigrants’ haven, a mafia warzone, a hippie paradise and a backdrop to the film Kids—but it has always been a place that outsiders call home.

Read more less

Inspired by her wildly popular The New York Times essay "The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give", Ada Calhoun provides a funny (but not flip), clever (but not smug) take on the institution of marriage. Weaving intimate moments from her own married life with frank insight from experts, clergy and friends, she upends expectations of total marital bliss to present a realistic—but ultimately optimistic—portrait of what marriage is really like. There will be fights, there will be existential angst, there may even be affairs; sometimes you’ll look at the person you love and feel nothing but rage. Despite it all, Calhoun contends, staying married is easy: just don’t get divorced. Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers bracing straight talk to the newly married and honours those who have weathered the storm. This exploration of modern marriage is at once wise and entertaining, a work of unexpected candour and literary grace.

Read more less

Inspired by her wildly popular The New York Times essay "The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give", Ada Calhoun provides a funny (but not flip), clever (but not smug) take on the institution of marriage. Weaving intimate moments from her own married life with frank insight from experts, clergy and friends, she upends expectations of total marital bliss to present a realistic—but ultimately optimistic—portrait of what marriage is really like. There will be fights, there will be existential angst, there may even be affairs; sometimes you’ll look at the person you love and feel nothing but rage. Despite it all, Calhoun contends, staying married is easy: just don’t get divorced. Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers bracing straight talk to the newly married and honours those who have weathered the storm. This exploration of modern marriage is at once wise and entertaining, a work of unexpected candour and literary grace.

Read more less