Product Review

Schulte s a detective in a murder mystery Who killed America s leisure time and how do we get it back Lev Grossman Time When award winning journalist Brigid Schulte a harried mother of two realized she was living a life of all work and no play she decided to find out why she felt so overwhelmed This book is the story of what she discovered and of how her search for answers became a journey toward a life of less stress and more leisure Schulte s findings are illuminating puzzling and at times maddening Being overwhelmed is even affecting the size of our brains But she also encounters signs of real progress evidence that what the ancient Greeks called the good life is attainable after all Schulte talks to companies who are inventing a new kind of workplace travels to countries where policies support office cultures that don t equate shorter hours with laziness and where people actually get more done meets couples who have figured out how to share responsibilities Enlivened by personal anecdotes humor and hope Overwhelmed is a book about modern life a revelation of the misguided beliefs and real stresses that have made leisure feel like a thing of the past and of how we can find time for it in the present 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 a