Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

An examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives.

“Illuminating and inspiring." ―New Republic

You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth―the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay.

Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries, Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work. Once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.

Sarah Jaffe is a journalist covering the politics of power. She is the author of Necessary Trouble and From the Ashes, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The American Prospect, and many other publications. She is a columnist at In These Times and The Progressive and the cohost of the Heart Reacts podcast.