Free Time

"Our free time is both vanishing and worsening, and Cross traces the history of this spiral with an emphasis on the transformation of consumer capitalism." -- Erik Baker * The New Yorker *
"Free Time, like all important books, provides us with a narrative that both establishes indispensable new perspectives and invites reflections that go beyond them... [Cross's] book helps us recognize the less than innocent influences that have captured time that had once been painstakingly liberated from work and converted it into little more than consumer activity." * Washington Post *
"Free Time is an academic journey through two-and-half millennia of leisure options." * The Spectator *
"Cross’s compelling history of free time illuminates the economic, political and cultural causes that led us to this place." * Times Literary Supplement *
"A sweeping and thought-provoking evaluation of the history of how people use leisure time, and why these ways often fall short in the present day." -- Peter N. Stearns, author of Time in World History
"Free Time sheds light on why so many of us feel our free time is unfulfilling (let alone, scarce). Cross is a truly innovative scholar with remarkable range, and an admirably clear writer who is able to present complex ideas in an accessible way; he deftly addresses issues that are intimately connected to each other but are all too often treated separately." -- Susan Matt, co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter
"A gifted stylist, a master researcher, Gary Cross is the leading authority on the most lasting and influential -ism of the twentieth century: consumerism. No one has written with such insight into the origins, evolution, nature, meaning, and appeal of consumer culture. Written in an engaging and highly accessible style, and addressing a topic of widespread public concern with an intellectual seriousness that is missing in works of pop psychology and sociology, Free Time is rich and highly original." -- Steven Mintz, author of New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood
"In 1962 Herbert Marcuse wrote that technology “threatens . . . the reversal of the relation between free time and working time . . . [making likely] the possibility of working time becoming marginal . . . . The result would be a radical transvaluation of values . . . . Advanced industrial society is in permanent mobilization against this possibility.” Free Time is a magnificent account of that “mobilization.” His is one of the best and most thorough explanations of why the shorter hours process ended during the 20th century after a century of progress, and why the accompanying expectation of what Walt Whitman called “higher progress” has been nearly forgotten." -- Benjamin Hunnicutt, author of Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream
"A seminal and ground-breaking study, "Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal" is an inherently fascinating and thoughtfully informative history of the concept and practice of 'leisure time', from the earliest recorded societies to our contemporary 'work-from-home' era." * Midwest Book Review *
"No one has written with such insight into the origins, evolution, nature, meaning and appeal of consumer culture. In Professor Cross’s view, consumerism—the desire to earn in order to consume—helps explain why American workers haven’t lobbied for a shorter workweek." * Inside Higher Ed *