In her attempts to juggle work and family life, Brigid Schulte has baked cakes until 2 a.m., frantically (but surreptitiously) sent important emails during school trips and then worked long into the night after her children were in bed. Realizing she had become someone who constantly burst in late, trailing shoes and schoolbooks and biscuit crumbs, she began to question, like so many of us, whether it is possible to be anything you want to be, have a family and still have time to breathe. So when Schulte met an eminent sociologist who studies time and he told her she enjoyed thirty hours of leisure each week, she thought her head was going to pop off. What followed was a trip down the rabbit hole of busy-ness, a journey to discover why so many of us and it near-impossible to press the 'pause' button on life and what got us here in the first place. Overwhelmed maps the individual, historical, biological and societal stresses that have ripped working mothers' and fathers' leisure to shreds and asks how it might be possible for us to put the pieces back together. Seeking insights, answers and inspiration, Schulte explores everything from the wiring of the brain and why workplaces are becoming increasingly demanding, to worldwide differences in family policy, how cultural norms shape our experiences at work, our unequal division of labor at home and why it's so hard for everyone but women especially to feel they deserve an elusive moment of peace. Sales and Marketing Highlights Impassioned and ultimately optimistic, Overwhelmed is a book about how to change things for the better. The perfect Mother's day present for any mother feeling a little less than practically perfect in every way, this is also the ideal book for fans of Caitlin Moran, Kat Banyard and Amy Chua, as well as Elizabeth Gilbert. The success of Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman shows that there is a huge market for funny, honest books about modern women's lives. Schulte's blend of memoir and journalism, of fact and opinion is perfect for this market and there are hundreds of thousands of women who can relate to her experiences Acquired in a huge auction in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Overwhelmed will cause a big splash when it is published in the States.
Brigid Schulte is an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post. She is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. In her career, she has written about, among other subjects, politics, culture, the military, science, the environment, work-life issues and poverty. She was part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband, Tom Bowman, military affairs correspondent for National Public Radio, and their two children, Liam and Tessa. @BrigidSchulte
