Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-354) and index.

"Couch potatoes, goof-offs, freeloaders, good-for-nothings, loafers, and loungers: ever since the Industrial Revolution, when the work ethic as we know it was formed, a chorus of slackers has held the pretensions of hardworking respectability up to scorn. Reviled by many, heroic to others, these layabouts stretch and yawn their way through life and literature while the rest of society sweats. Their history is the history of labor in negative. From Benjamin Franklin's "air baths" to Jack Kerouac's dharma bums to Generation X slackers and beyond, the case studies in Doing Nothing prove that anti-work ethic proponents have held a central but underrecognized place in modern culture." "Tom Lutz illuminates the changing place of leisure in America and, in doing so, shows us idleness (and work) in a new light."--Jacket.

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