Gary S. Cross is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Modern History in the Department of History at Pennsylvania State University and author of Freak Show Legacies and Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture.
"""A sweeping and thought-provoking evaluation of the history of how people use leisure time, and why these ways often fall short in the present day."" -- Peter N. Stearns, author of Time in World History ""Free Time sheds light on why so many of us feel our free time is unfulfilling (let alone, scarce). Cross is a truly innovative scholar with remarkable range, and an admirably clear writer who is able to present complex ideas in an accessible way; he deftly addresses issues that are intimately connected to each other but are all too often treated separately."" -- Susan Matt, co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter ""A gifted stylist, a master researcher, Gary Cross is the leading authority on the most lasting and influential -ism of the twentieth century: consumerism. No one has written with such insight into the origins, evolution, nature, meaning, and appeal of consumer culture. Written in an engaging and highly accessible style, and addressing a topic of widespread public concern with an intellectual seriousness that is missing in works of pop psychology and sociology, Free Time is rich and highly original."" -- Steven Mintz, author of New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood ""In 1962 Herbert Marcuse wrote that technology “threatens . . . the reversal of the relation between free time and working time . . . [making likely] the possibility of working time becoming marginal . . . . The result would be a radical transvaluation of values . . . . Advanced industrial society is in permanent mobilization against this possibility.” Free Time is a magnificent account of that “mobilization.” His is one of the best and most thorough explanations of why the shorter hours process ended during the 20th century after a century of progress, and why the accompanying expectation of what Walt Whitman called “higher progress” has been nearly forgotten."" -- Benjamin Hunnicutt, author of Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream"