With references to Adam Smith and Dire Straits, Karl Marx and Scooby-Doo, she turns what is essentially a chronicle of white guilt and anxious privilege into a thoughtful and nuanced meditation on the compromises inherent in having a comfortable life.” - The Wall Street Journal Biss’s prose in general, is the spare and engaging way she interrogates such complex and abstract concepts. Having and Being Had picks apart the ethics behind our capitalist society, culminating in a powerful look at the ways in which we assign value to the people, places and things that comprise our lives.” - Time

Keenly aware of her privilege as a white, well-educated woman who has benefited from a wide network of family and friends, Biss has written a book that is, in effect, the opposite of capitalism in its willingness to acknowledge that everything she’s accomplished rests on the labor of others.” - Associated Press Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?” Described by the New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Through a series of engaging exchanges-in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences-she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. “My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,” Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into.

The results are enthralling.” -Associated PressĪ timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York Times bestselling author, “one of the leading lights of the modern American essay.” - Financial Times “A sensational new book tries to figure out whether it ’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME , NPR, INSTYLE, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

Having and being had book