Career Crash: America's New Crisis-And Who Survives - Hardcover

Barry Glassner is Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California.

An affable, helpful look at the baby boomer generation's seemingly distinctive form of midlife emergency--losing a job and being unable to find another--by Glassner (Sociology/Univ. of Southern California; Bodies, 1988; Drugs in Adolescent Worlds, 1987). Corporate downsizing, a long recession, and inflated career expectations leading to midlife disappointment--these are the reasons why half a million boomer managers and professionals were out of work as of mid-1993, writes Glassner, who goes on to create a taxonomy of the unemployed: those suddenly fired from middle- management jobs; some who bitterly ``divorce'' their medical or legal careers after many years; rebel ``do-gooders'' who lose their sense of mission or their funding; couples who alternate on the unemployment line; and people who've simply burned out from careers chosen too early and in accordance with parents' or teachers' preferences. Chock-a-block with convincing case histories and empathetic advice from experts both establishment and countercultural, the book prescribes a kind of career ``mourning'' period, a ``comeback'' strategy that involves ``cutting lose,'' ``hanging out,'' and finally moving on to new and happier work lives. Timely and readable career advice. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.