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

"[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.

• The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home
• TIME BIND
• Overwhelmed: How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity
• Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family
• I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time
• From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
• Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work
• Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women
• The Division of Labor in Society
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life