“Working and Not Working” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“Gibson is excellent at capturing that exact moment when the severing comes…”
“Marketplace” — NPR
“Tess Vigeland talks to DW Gibson and Bridgette Lacy from the NOT WORKING project…”
“Author Talk with Jeff Glor” — CBS News
“Jeff Glor talks to DW Gibson about his new book and accompanying film project…”
“An Oral History of Our Troubled Economy” — The Takeaway
“From this depression, however, Gibson found that a feeling of community arises…”
“News and Noteworthy Books” — USA Today
“Inspired by Studs Terkel’s Working and James Agee and Walker Evan’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, it’s been praised by Ken Burns…”
“DW Gibson Found Lore in a Jobless Place” — Interview Magazine
“Gibson’s tome is a touching and all-too-necessary text for 2012.”
“The Unemployed Finally Speak Out” — The Daily Beast
“As one human resources manager put it, ‘There is no way to say it so that anyone can hear anything but ‘you don’t want me here anymore.'”
“If I can’t do that, then I’m worthless” — Reuters
“You want to stay someplace where you feel comfortable and build relationships with people, but I just don’t think corporate America’s like that anymore.”
“Putting A Face On Unemployment” — The Guardian
“In the coming weeks, in readings across the country, Gibson will be accompanied by people featured in the book who will read out their own story.”
“Intensely Human Look” –– New York Daily News
“That is why this book is so important: the America in which we can define ourselves in terms of our prosperity is likely gone, or on hold for a good long while at least. “Not Working” unifies the narrative of change into one collective…”
“Control” –– New York Times
“I kept hinting to my wife that something is probably happening, but her being the type that worries about everything, I was just kind of very subtle with it. And she honestly did not know until the day I came home at 10:30 in the morning with the box.”
“Voices of America’s Laid Off Workers” — Fortune
“We met them in libraries, parking lots, fast-food restaurants, homes, union halls, fellowship halls, cheap motel rooms, coffee shops and bars — wherever someone with a story preferred to sit and talk. The majority claimed that they or their particular experience — or both — were boring. The results were anything but. Here are their stories.”
“Spring Preview: Top Ten Books” –– The New York Observer
“For what reads as a kind of oral history of the recession and housing crisis, DW Gibson traveled the country talking to people who are out of work—from college graduates looking for a first job, to executives with decades-long careers. The book is a catalogue of these responses. The point that comes across is that the most democratic thing in America today is a shared suffering (note the title’s pun). The book gives a name and a face to what is often tossed around as a mere statistic.”
“Brother, Can You Spare a Line?” –– New York Times
“This past summer I drove across the country interviewing people who had lost their jobs since 2007 — since the housing market disintegrated, since Lehman Brothers evaporated, since layoffs subsumed the work force…”