Doing nothing : a history of loafers, loungers, slackers and bums in America / Tom Lutz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lutz, Tom.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slackers--United States--History.

Slackers.

Laziness--United States--History.

Laziness.

History.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 363 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

Summary:

"Couch potatoes, goof-offs, freeloaders, good-for-nothings, loafers, and loungers: ever since the Industrial Revolution, when the work ethic as we know it was formed, a chorus of slackers has held the pretensions of hardworking respectability up to scorn. Reviled by many, heroic to others, these layabouts stretch and yawn their way through life and literature while the rest of society sweats. Their history is the history of labor in negative. From Benjamin Franklin's "air baths" to Jack Kerouac's dharma bums to Generation X slackers and beyond, the case studies in Doing Nothing prove that anti-work ethic proponents have held a central but underrecognized place in modern culture." "Tom Lutz illuminates the changing place of leisure in America and, in doing so, shows us idleness (and work) in a new light."--Jacket.

Contents:

Cody on the couch

The idler and his works

Loungers, romantics, and rip van winkle

Loafers, communists, drinkers, and bohemians

Nerve cases, saunterers, tramps, and flâneurs

Sports, flappers, babbitts, and bums

Beats, nonconformists, playboys, and delinquents

Draft Dodgers, surfers, TV beatniks, and hippie communards

Slackers.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-354) and index.

American Book Awards, Winner, 2008

ISBN:

0865476500

9780865476509

9780865477377

086547737X

OCLC:

61864056

Publisher Number:

9780865476509

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description