The Overworked American.

• Author: von Hoffman, Nicholas

The Overworked American. Juliet Schor. Basic, $23. To listen to the caged experts the television networks keep in inventory to explicate the truth, the only butt-hustling hard-chargers on the face of the planet are the Japanese. Americans are lectured on their softness, sloth, and indolence. But Harvard economist Juliet Schor doesn't think that sounds quite right. Her book confirms that, in America, the 40-hour work week is an institution that disappeared into history about the time those old-fashioned, tailfinned automobiles were being driven onto the used car lots. It is an exasperating anomaly that in a time of painful unemployment, millions of Americans are overworked, though not always overpaid.

Schor's computations show that the work week and work year have been lengthening for a generation, confirming what many of us know from our own lives and those of our friends: A lot of people are close to working until they drop. "In return for a seventies' standard of living, employers are now demanding far more hours," Schor writes. For the production and nonsupervisory employees who make up 80 percent of the labor force, these demands have been substantial. According to our calculations, just to reach their 1970 standard of living, they must work 245 more hours, or six-plus extra weeks a year." If you count taking care of the house and children, many women may be using cosmetics not to look pretty, but to cover up the fatigue lines. Theirs is a life of little or no leisure, a surprising end to the century that social scientists had forecast would see the coming of a leisure glut. In the fifties and sixties, some wondered what Americans would do with their time in the decades to come. Now we know: They work.

So far so good with Schor, but after ably stating the facts, her analytical engine develops some serious vibrations, if it does not altogether disintegrate. She deserves praise for breaking off the chains of her profession, which too often sees people as one-dimensional caricatures, a practice that renders her calling not only dismal, but often nearly useless. She uses culture, history, and motivations beyond that of the cash nexus-a rare breadth among economists-to make her argument. She unapologetically injects moral values into her discussion, thereby also separating herself from many of her colleagues who make it a point of pride to withhold opinions about the rights and wrongs of things. The Overworked American is a book so serious...