Not Working

“A book with fascinating range [and] a fresh perspective [that shows] how powerful the genre of oral history can be.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Wrenching . . . Wide-ranging . . . This book is so important.” —New York Daily News

“A touching and all-too-necessary text.” —Interview

“Comparable in heft and style to Studs Terkel’s Working, Not Working is as timely as its predecessor. . . . [It] provides an in-depth look at a new type of American and reveals a new type of American story. . . . The storytellers in Not Working . . . show that, as a society, we’re more than where we work.” —City Arts (Seattle, WA)

“Add[s] faces, personalities and pathos to the unemployment figures thrown around every month. Just as [Studs] Terkel showed how so many of us define ourselves with our work, Gibson’s subjects demonstrate how, even beyond the financial havoc that ensues, losing a job unsettles a person’s sense of self.”—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH)

“Not Working reveals something Americans only talk about in numbers.  Gibson gives . . . the big picture of America’s temperature.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“An intense, moving, ground-level history of our difficult times.” —Teju Cole, author of Open City

“Powerful and heartrending.” —Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker