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James Suzman
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Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time Hardcover – September 3, 2020

by James Suzman (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 329 ratings
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A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work, from the origins of life on Earth to our ever-more automated present

'A fascinating exploration that challenges our basic assumptions of what work means'
Yuval Noah Harari

'One of those few books that will turn your customary ways of thinking upside down'
Susan Cain

The work we do brings us meaning, moulds our values, determines our social status and dictates how we spend most of our time. But this wasn't always the case: for 95% of our species' history, work held a radically different importance.

How, then, did work become the central organisational principle of our societies? How did it transform our bodies, our environments, our views on equality and our sense of time? And why, in a time of material abundance, are we working more than ever before?

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  1. Print length
    464 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Bloomsbury Circus
  4. Publication date
    September 3, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6.42 x 1.77 x 9.57 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    152660499X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1526604996
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Circus (September 3, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 152660499X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1526604996
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.81 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.42 x 1.77 x 9.57 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 329 ratings

About the author

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James Suzman

James Suzman

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With a head full of Laurens van der Post and half an anthropology degree from St Andrews University under his belt, James Suzman hitched a ride into Botswana’s eastern Kalahari in June 1991. He has been working with the San (Bushmen) and other Kalahari peoples ever since.

He has a PHD in social anthropology and was the Smuts Fellow in African studies at Cambridge University.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
329 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ivar
5.0 out of 5 stars worth reading and sharing
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
This is one of the most interesting and informative book on economics and work I have read in a long time.
Takes you on a trip from the stone age to today and you get a much better understanding of the mess we are in.
Ton's of references. Highly recommended.
5 people found this helpful
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Geoff Crocker
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but slightly off-target
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2020
This is a fascinating informative book, but one which only obliquely addresses the target of its title. James Suzman writes engagingly on his specialty of anthropology. We learn from masked weaver birds and from termite colonies how excess harvesting of energy generates work. Observations from the Ju/’hoansi in the Kalahari, Neanderthals and Natufians seem a small sample to conclude that ‘for 95% of our species’ history, work did not occupy anything like the hallowed place in people’s lives that it does now’ (p127), even if true. Fire reduced the need for work, leading to boredom which gave time for other creative activities, including art, entertainment, and the development of technology. Foraging and farming paradigms are discussed at length. Suzman covers lots of topics including animal labour, slave labour, Ricardo’s labour theory of value, barter and money economies, the Roman empire, industrialisation and Luddites, inequality, the manufacturing efficiency of Taylorism, Lubbock and reduced hours of work. His eclectic learning at times reads like a brain dump, always interesting, (Kellogg intended cornflakes as an anaphrodisiac (p342), J K Galbraith was 6 foot 8 inches tall (p345) etc, but not necessarily relevant to his purported argument.

Of more contemporary relevance, he covers ‘The Great Decoupling’ whereby real wages flatlined against soaring productivity (p350), and the bifurcation of the labour market into huge executive salaries and the impoverishment of ‘bullshit jobs’ (p352), with amusing special derision for the McKinsey consulting company (p355, 393), workaholism, and environmental damage. Automation has led to false jobs, a bulging service sector, and ‘bureaucratic bloat’ (p385), all of which are derivative phenomena and not necessarily justified per se, - ‘jobs that served no obvious purpose other than giving someone something to do’ (p383), with low job satisfaction (p387).

Following this extensive background, Suzman does not go on to address the core implications of automation and associated unemployment, ie loss of work as income, role, and activity. He gives one line to universal basic income (p410), which has to be the essential remedy to technological unemployment, since in a totally automated economy with no work or wage, UBI would be the only and necessary source of income. The need for UBI therefore increases in proportion to the prevalence of automation in the production economy. Human ontology, identity, dignity, and fulfilment will no longer rely on employment in factories and offices, but will be more intrinsic. This may represent a challenge to humanity, but one which promises fruitful outcomes. It is this philosophical switch in self-understanding from a paradigm of work dependency which Suzman could usefully have examined further.
9 people found this helpful
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Jneedspopcorn
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Perspective on life
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2022
Verified Purchase
I thoroughly enjoy reading this book and recommend it to anyone
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Ramo
5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant!
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2021
Verified Purchase
I got this book for my husband. He really enjoys it and we talk about how we evolved and the influence the advent of agriculture had on humanity.
One person found this helpful
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Robert G.
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting read.
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2021
Verified Purchase
Very well researched and written. And easy to read, i.e. not overly dense the way same histories are.
One person found this helpful
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NJ
2.0 out of 5 stars Unfocused
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2021
Work is too unfocused.

Many books have extensive scopes, but good books of this genre either have some original viewpoints or engaging styles while staying focussed on macro arguments. They do not bog down on needless details and attempt to discuss over-arching trends that spawn millions of years or billions of people.

On the other hand, Work aims to cover vast stretches of human history through short essay-length chapters on what appears like randomly selected topics. The author has to try hard to somehow link everything to the word he uses in the title, but he could have equally covered "work" at the Big Bang explosion, "work" done for the Great Wall, or "work" done by soldiers in wars or the painters or the housewives as topics. The point is the thread connecting the chapters is thin and with enormous gaps in between.

It does not help that almost every chapter is based on commonly available, well-discussed material on those subject matters. Chapters are too brief to throw light on nuances (dearly needed in highly biased, subjective later chapters) and too quick to make any lasting impact.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Ignacio Fauro
5.0 out of 5 stars Mind openner
Reviewed in Spain on November 3, 2022
Verified Purchase
Really insightfull book that makes you question any assumptions on why we work
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Dammit
5.0 out of 5 stars Buch des Jahres
Reviewed in Germany on November 26, 2020
Verified Purchase
2020 ist nicht gerade für seine Großzügigkeit berühmt, aber dieses Buchs macht Vieles wett. Work ist packend von der ersten Seite an, es liest sich fast wie ein Krimi, obwohl es ein Fachbuch ist. Ich habe es regelrecht verschluckt. Es ist gut geschrieben, mit einem Tropfen Ironie in machen Passagen, gut mit Fakten untermauert ohne langweilig zu werden und regt zum Nachdenken an, vor allem in dieser Zeit. Man kann auch aus dem Buch beim Kaminfeuer den gefesselten Zuhörern Geschichten erzählen, Es ist voll mit Anekdoten und Aha-Effekten, die gerne weitergegeben werden. Liest es! Es ist eine gut benutzte Zeit.
3 people found this helpful
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SilvioM
4.0 out of 5 stars Storia di come l'umanità spende il propio tempo
Reviewed in Italy on November 21, 2020
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Percorre l'idea di lavoro, il necessario e l'abbondanza dal tempo delle prime popolazioni dei cacciatori-raccoglitori fino ai giorni nostri, confrontando i dati storici e archeologici con le testimonianze delle ultime popolazioni odierne dei cacciatori raccoglitori della Namibia. Sullo sfondo la domanda su come automazione e robots cambieranno il lavoro e come spenderemo il tempo.
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Simon Roberts
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 13, 2020
Verified Purchase
Work - where we do it, whose labours we value and its disappearance at the hands of a pandemic or new forms of automation - has rarely been so topical. That makes this a very timely book. But with its vast historical range, from the origins of life of earth, the emergence of agriculture and cities to b&llshit jobs and a world of job eating AI, this book tells a different story of work. It’s an account that helps us understand better our relationship with it, a relationship that is common in the natural world - a desire to expend energy and in doing so find a sense of purpose and make meaning, even from sometimes mundane activities. It’s also tale which shows that many of the assumptions we have about how we spend our time (and why) came with the agricultural revolution and the first cities and are not iron laws of the life for Homo sapiens. Faced with rapid ecological and technological change we may or may not become less busy, but we are highly likely to be spending our time, and expending our energies, in different ways. In fact, this book argues, we must.

If you’re a fan of ‘deep’ histories à la Yuval Harari you’ll love this book. It zips along, wears its scholarship lightly, and offers many a profound insight along the way. Perfect for these WFH times we live in now and for thinking about what might, or must, come next.
11 people found this helpful
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Geoff Crocker
4.0 out of 5 stars More about anthropology than work itself
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2020
Verified Purchase
This is a fascinating informative engaging book, but one which doesn’t much address the subject of its title.

James Suzman covers lots of topics including masked weaver birds, Kalahari and other tribes, the role of fire, animal labour, slave labour, Ricardo’s labour theory of value, barter and money economies, the Roman empire, industrialisation and Luddites, inequality, the manufacturing efficiency of Taylorism, Lubbock and reduced hours of work. But the cases discussed are a small sample to conclude that ‘for 95% of our species’ history, work did not occupy anything like the hallowed place in people’s lives that it does now’ (p127), even if this is true.

Of more contemporary relevance, Suzman covers ‘The Great Decoupling’ whereby real wages flatlined against soaring productivity (p350), and the bifurcation of the labour market into huge executive salaries and the impoverishment of undervalued jobs (p352), with amusing special derision for the McKinsey consulting company (p355, 393), workaholism, and environmental damage. Automation has led to false jobs, a bulging service sector, and ‘bureaucratic bloat’ (p385), all of which are derivative phenomena and not necessarily justified per se, - ‘jobs that served no obvious purpose other than giving someone something to do’ (p383), with low job satisfaction (p387).

Following this extensive background, Suzman does not go on to address the core implications of automation and associated unemployment, ie loss of work as income, role, and activity. He makes only short mention of universal basic income (p410), which has some claim to be an essential remedy to technological unemployment, since in a totally automated economy with no work or wage, UBI would be the only and necessary source of income. Human ontology, identity, dignity, and fulfilment will no longer rely on employment in factories and offices, but will be more intrinsic. This may represent a challenge to humanity, but one which promises fruitful outcomes. It is this philosophical switch in self-understanding from a paradigm of work dependency which Suzman could usefully have examined further.
22 people found this helpful
 Report