Can't Even by Anne Helen Petersen

Can't Even by Anne Helen Petersen

A BEST BOOK OF THE FALL AS SEEN IN: Apartment Therapy * Book Riot * Business Insider * BuzzFeed * Daily Nebraskan * Entertainment Weekly * Esquire * Fortune * Harper's Bazaar * HelloGiggles * LinkedIn * O Magazine * Time Magazine



"[A] razor sharp book of cultural criticism . . . With blistering prose and all-too vivid reporting, Petersen lays bare the burnout and despair of millennials, while also charting a path to a world where members of her generation can feel as if the boot has been removed from their necks."--Esquire



"An analytically precise, deeply empathic book about the psychic toll modern capitalism has taken on those shaped by it. Can't Even is essential to understanding our age, and ourselves."--Ezra Klein, Vox co-founder and New York Times best-selling author of Why We're Polarized



An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials--the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change



Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you're too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.



While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can't Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to "perform" our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen's viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over seven million reads since its publication in January 2019.



Can't Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses--including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize--describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can't Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.

Anne Helen Petersen is a cinema and media studies professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and also lives there. She also contributes to The Hairpin, a women's website.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780358561842
ISBN 10	0358561841
Title	Can't Even
Author	Anne Helen Petersen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Dey Street Books
Year published	2021-05-04
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.