Make Your Own Job charts the transformation of the American work ethic in the twentieth century. It is no longer enough to be reliable; now, workers must lead with creative vision. Erik Baker argues that the entrepreneurial ethic has been a Band-Aid for a society in which ever-mounting precarity discredits the old ethics of effort and persistence.
Baker’s thesis is rousingly novel and ingeniously fine-grained ... Not dry, insular or detached from everyday concerns. Although it is thoroughly researched and rigorously conceived, it is also gripping. This is history with urgent stakes and real consequences.
Less concerned with the chronological development of American entrepreneurship than with the idea of it—the ways in which 'ordinary people have thought about their working lives' and how entrepreneurialism has become a value unto itself. Baker aims to track the anxieties and desires of a society undergoing epochal transitions and the evolution of what he calls 'the entrepreneurial work ethic'.
Baker delivers a deeply researched and timely exploration on the origins of America’s obsession with entrepreneurship, and how the corporate class has leveraged this obsession to reshape our economic landscape for the worse ... Striking insights ... A bracing reminder that our current work culture is neither natural nor immutable.
