Anne Helen Petersen

Before Liz Smith and Perez Hilton became household names in the world of celebrity gossip, before Rush Limbaugh became the voice of conservatism, there was Hedda Hopper. In 1938, this 52-year-old struggling actress rose to fame and influence writing an incendiary gossip column, “Hedda Hopper's Hollywood,” that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and ...

Has the American Dream become an unrealistic utopian fantasy, or have we simply forgotten what we are working for? In his topical book, "Free Time," Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines the way that progress, once defined as more of the good things in life as well as more free time to enjoy them, has come to be understood only as economic growth and m...

An extraordinarily informative scholarly history of the debate over working hours from 1920 to 1940. --New York Times Book ReviewFor more than a century preceding the Great Depression, work hours were steadily reduced. Intellectuals, labor leaders, politicians, and workers saw this reduction in work as authentic progress and the resulting increase ...

In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even th...

A penetrating sociological and psychological study of the new middle class that comprise the backbone of modern American society....

Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then, one of them goes missing.In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat....