Work & Family: Essays from the Work & Family Column of The Wall Street Journal

Every Wednesday, 1.8 million Wall Street Journal readers eagerly turn to Sue Shellenbarger's "Work & Family" column for advice, guidance, encouragement, and insights into the most important social issue of our day: balancing career and personal life. Since creating the column in 1991, Shellenbarger has brought her unique wit and wisdom to the problems successful people encounter in managing child care, elder care, burn-out, job sharing, marital stress, coping with emergencies, and corporate and personal trade-offs. Now Shellenbarger has collected the very best of her "Work & Family" essays in a single volume for all readers.

A hardworking parent herself, Shellenbarger knows what it's like to put in long hours at a high-pressure job while trying to raise kids, sustain a marriage, and carve out precious personal time. In her columns, she zeroes in on real people and the work-family balancing acts they perform every day. People like magazine editor Mary Hickey who figured out ways to look like a workaholic on the job while still having a life. Bill Galston who resigned a promising career as a White House policy adviser so he could spend more time with his ten-year-old son. And research manager Rose Arnone whose performance skyrocketed under a boss who valued productivity over "face time."

Clearly organized by theme, Work & Family covers every aspect of the subject from starting a family in the midst of a flourishing career to figuring out suitable (and affordable) child care arrangements for children of different ages; from dealing with special workplace issues like job sharing, telecommuting, and family-unfriendly bosses to caring for aging family members. Each section gathers together dozens of her most incisive, practical, and eye-opening columns.

Filled with on-target advice while offering solid, unwavering support, Work & Family speaks directly to the needs of smart, ambitious, hardworking people. Having a life while succeeding at a demanding job has never been tougher: here is one book that helps us all meet and master the challenges of our complicated lives.

Sue Shellenbarger's "Work & Family" columns have been appearing regularly in The Wall Street Journal since 1991. The former chief of the Journal's Chicago news bureau, Shellenbarger has been writing and editing for the Journal for seventeen years. She has also served as a contributing editor and columnist for Parenting magazine and as a financial markets columnist for the Associated Press.