A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE **
**
**NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, INSTYLE, AND *GOOD
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 the New York Times
bestselling 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 the New York Times as 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 Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and
her class, "In what have we invested?"
