Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte
Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte
2 Rating(s)
List: $14.99 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.49

Overwhelmed
Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

Author: Brigid Schulte

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 14 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/15/2014

Synopsis

Can working parents in America—or anywhere—ever find true leisure time?According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is "that place in which we realize our humanity." If that’s true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we're doing dangerously little realizing of our humanity. In Overwhelmed, Schulte, a staff writer for The Washington Post, asks: Are our brains, our partners, our culture, and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but "contaminated time?"Schulte first asked this question in a 2010 feature for The Washington Post Magazine: “How did researchers compile this statistic that said we were rolling in leisure—over four hours a day? Did any of us feel that we actually had downtime? Was there anything useful in their research—anything we could do?”Overwhelmed is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Schulte speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents to tease out the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration. She investigates progressive offices trying to invent a new kind of workplace; she travels across Europe to get a sense of how other countries accommodate working parents; she finds younger couples who claim to have figured out an ideal division of chores, childcare, and meaningful paid work. Overwhelmed is the story of what she found out.

About Brigid Schulte

Brigid Schulte is an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and The Washington Post Magazine, and was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize. She is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband and their two children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Specialk on October 27, 2014

If you're not a mom, you probably don't actually want to read this book. My rating and review are going to seem harsh - the book itself is well researched, well written, and I read [almost] all of it. Okay I started skimming in the last few chapters...but I'm not a mom. My issue lies in the selling......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on March 30, 2014

This book immediately caught my attention when I heard a snippet about it on NPR. I am a stay-at-home mom who would like to return to the workforce, but I have been worried that doing so would add a lot of stress to my life. I was hoping this book would have some suggestions to help me balance mothe......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on December 19, 2014

3.5 stars I picked this book up because I had felt overwhelmed as of late due to my commitments as a full-time student at one of the most intense colleges in the country. A few pages in, I realized that I had it lucky, with my two jobs and my classes and my club activities; at least I did not have di......more

Goodreads review by Andrea on January 15, 2016

It's funny. This book made me feel, mostly, lucky to be a single mom--at least right now--even though single motherhood has been a state of almost constant overwhelm for many years. The first three years after the divorce, my daughter was still very small; every weekday I woke at 6 and worked straigh......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on March 21, 2014

I want to buy a dozen copies of this book and give it to all the working women I know. Schulte does a good job of synthesizing studies and ideas about time and expectations, raising questions that we as a society should be asking and are not. Her writing is very smooth and easy to read with a combin......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List