Description

Riverhead Books,paperback

Publication Date:August 31, 2021

Publisher Marketing: ANEW YORK TIMESEDITORS’CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BYTIME, NPR,INSTYLE, ANDGOOD HOUSEKEEPING

“A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. . . . The results are enthralling.” –Associated Press

A timely and arresting new look at affluence by theNew York Timesbestselling author, “one of the leading lights of the modern American essay.” —Financial Times

“My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,” Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges–in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences–she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by theNew York Timesas a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyonc to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”