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Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History
Episode: Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Description: How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Successful workers were increasingly expected to show initiative and enthusiasm for change—not just to do their jobs reliably but to create new opportunities for themselves and for others. Our culture of work today is more demanding than ever, even though workers haven't seen commensurate rewards.Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America (Harvard University Press, 2025) by Dr. Erik Baker explains how this entrepreneurial work ethic took hold, from its origins in lat...