Book 13: Out of Office by Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel

Boy, this book. I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book exactly, beyond it being an overview of how "working from home" worked before the pandemic and how it works now as we enter the third year of the pandemic and how it could work in the future. And to its great credit, it's not a book that attempts to argue that employees are the ones who can and should be "optimizing" how remote work functions for white collar office workers; it's very clear about the fact that issues with remote work are systemic and institution based rather than on the backs of individuals, and therefore organizations and policymakers have the power to change how they work. But being focused on that source of responsibility also made it a deeply depressing read for me at the moment. It's not intended to be; they describe their view of the future of work as being cautiously hopeful, precisely because so many industries are in flux at the moment and that can be fertile ground for change. But the book's historical overview of how the concept of work (and office work specifically) has changed over the past century in the U.S. was so upsetting and it made me feel like what even is the point of any of this, all jobs suck. Which I definitely understand is more of a reflection of my own state of mind about work rather than a rational reflection on what work of any kind may look like in a year or five years or ten. However, it definitely also pointed out a fundamental flaw with how I want to engage with nonfiction at the moment: I want ways to fix intractable problems but I also want to be able to believe those fixes are possible and aren't just wishful thinking called "self-empowerment." And those kinds of solutions feel like they're in short supply at the moment! None of which is the book's fault, but also I don't know if I'm actually able to read these kinds of books at the moment the way they should be read.  

Grade: A