Reviewing Material About the Future of Work

The Future of Work

Reviewing Material About the Future of Work

Your review should be between 700 and 1000 words or 3 pages to 4 pages in length.

In order to expand your knowledge and develop your critical reading and writing skills, you are asked to review one of the books from the following list.

Please identify what you are reviewing by providing full bibliographic information at the TOP of your review --  eg. Author, title, place of publication, publisher, and date.  At the end of the review, you need to provide a bibliography listing any other sources that you used – eg. reviews by other authors.

Your review should focus on what the book tells us about the future of work.  

What did you learn that you found to be relevant to this course? Does it merely describe a problem, or does it point towards solutions? Be explicit.  In your review you should not only describe or summarize the contents of the book, it should offer explicit insights about the future of work.

And finally, evaluate the quality of the work. A review is written for a specific audience – someone who has not read the book but is interested in the subject matter – in this case, your TA.

Here are some tips or guidelines:  

1. Don’t try to cover everything in the book.

2. After summarizing the contents focus on what is relevant to this course. What lessons does it offer about the future of work? Organize the review around these lessons or insights about work, rather than follow the table of contents or repeat the storyline.

3. Illustrate your review with short paraphrased passages (phrased in your own words) or brief quotations from the work.

4.  Discuss the chief strengths or weaknesses of the book. Maintain a critical balance (be fair-minded).

CHOOSE ONE BOOK FROM THE LIST BELOW FOR YOUR REVIEW

• Standing, Guy. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. 2011.
• Standing, Guy. The Precariat Charter: From denizens to citizens. Bloomsbury: London, 2015..
• Roman, Richard and Edur Velasco Arregui. Continental Crucible: Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America. Fernwood: Halifax, 2013.
• Rubin, Jeff. The Carbon Bubble : What Happens to Us When It Bursts 
• Haiven, Max.  Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons. Zed Books, 2014;
• McKibbon, Bill. Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist, 2013.
• McKibbon, Bill. Eaarth: Making a life on a tough new planet. Vintage Canada: Toronto, 2011.
• McAlevey, Jane. Raising Expectations (and raising hell): My decade fighting for the labour movement. New York and London: Verso, 2012
• Mazzucato, Mariana. The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths.
• Anthem Press, 2013  
• Chang, Ha-Joon. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Bloomsbury, 2010
• Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001.   
• Greenhouse, Steven. The Big Squeeze: Tough times for the American worker. New York: Anchor Books, 2008/9.
• Frank,Thomas. Pity the Billionaire: The hard-times swindle and the unlikely comeback of the Right.  New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012.
• Harden, Joel D. Quiet No More: New Political Activism in Canada and Around the Globe.     Toronto: Lorimer, 2013.
• Hedges, Chris and Joe Sacco. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2012. .
• Hedges, Chris.   Wages of Rebellion: The moral imperative of revolt. 2015.
• Jackson, Andrew. Work and Labour in Canada: Critical issues. ,2^nd edition. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2010.
• Judt, Tony. Ill Fares the Land. London: Penguin, 2010. 
• Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine, 2008. 
• McQuaig, Linda and Neil Brooks. The Trouble with Billionaires. Toronto: Penguin, 2010.
• Raphael, Dennis. Poverty in Canada. Second edition. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2011.
• Rinehard, James. The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the labour process. 5^th edition. Thomson Nelson: Toronto, 2006.   
• Ross, Andrew. Low Pay, High Profits: The global push for fair labour.  New York: The New Press, 2004.
• Ross, Andrew. Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and labour in precarious times. New York: New York UP, 2009.
• Schnall, Peter, Marnie Dobson, and Ellen Rosskam (eds)(2009). Unhealthy work: causes, consequences, cures. Amityville, N.Y.: Baywood.
• Stiglitz, Joseph. The Price of Inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future. New York: Norton, 2012.
• Workman, Thom. If You’re in My Way, I’m Walking: The Assault on Working People since 1970. Halifax: Fernwood, 2009.