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Idle Hands: Experience of Unemployment, 1790-1990

Paperback

Main Details

Title Idle Hands: Experience of Unemployment, 1790-1990
Authors and Contributors      By (author) John Burnett
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback
Pages:384
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 156
ISBN/Barcode 9780415055017
ClassificationsDewey:331.137941
Audience
Undergraduate
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly

Publishing Details

Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint Routledge
Publication Date 30 June 1994
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

"Idle Hands" offers a major social history of unemployment in Britain over the last 200 years. It focuses on the experiences of working people in becoming unemployed, coping with unemployment and searching for work, and their reactions and responses to their problems. Direct evidence of the impact of unemployment is drawn from extensive personal biographies.

Reviews

Kirkus Review US:Burnett uses vivid quotations from his extensive knowledge of working-class autobiographies to bring to life what could have been a dryish subject, prone as it is to attract official statistics and pious moralizing. He reveals the impact of being out of work on ordinary lives, 'not what happened but how people felt about it when it was happening'. Our postwar years of full employment were, it seems, exceptional and historically untypical; never before have so many young people been unemployed for so long. Unless work is shared more, Burnett concludes, the devil will find mischief for idle hands. (Kirkus UK)