Kurt Andersen, author of Heyday and host of the radio show Studio 360:

“Despite the fact that I was born during the Eisenhower Administration, I’ve always felt a more natural kinship with Generation X than with my own cohort. And now, just as Gen Xers are (ha!) entering middle age, Lisa Chamberlain’s smart, enterprising and entertaining book has helped me understand some of the reasons why — as well as why I tend to be 51% hopeful about America, notwithstanding our current collective confusion.”

Sandra Tsing Loh, Marketplace commentator, writer and performer:

“Chamberlain is witty, brainy, fabulous. [Slackonomics is] a necessary addition to any collapsing IKEA bookshelf.”

Heather Havrilesky, Salon:

“I’m fascinated by Lisa Chamberlain’s funny, thoughtful and surprisingly thorough examination of the forces that shaped Gen Xers’ unique perspectives on the world. … Weaving together pop culture, statistics, observations and anecdotes, Slackonomics is the sort of resonant, witty, highly readable cultural commentary that we were way too self-involved to read (or write) 15 years ago.” [Click here for entire review]

Zephyr Teachout, assistant professor of law at Duke University, and director of Internet organizing for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004:

“This book is incredibly easy to read, and full of interesting observations and theories. Reading it is like enjoying five courses at a great dinner party–a Gen X dinner party–with confused and brilliant friends, full of the insights and insecurities of the peculiar demographic of middle class kids who came of age in the 70s and 80s, and can’t stop coming of age. It reflects seriously on the economic challenges faced by a chaotic, and fundamentally romantic, group of Americans.”

PopMatters, July 2008:

“Chamberlain’s deftly researched book gives a group of people once lumped disparagingly with Reality Bites and dot-com disasters a multifaceted, fresh and potent identity.” [Click here for entire review]

Jacob S. Hacker, Professor of Political Science, Yale University, and author, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream:

“Slackonomics provides an engaging, informative, and surprisingly humorous tour through the booming, buzzing confusion of Gen-X economic life. Though a fellow Gen-Xer, I’d never thought of myself as part of a generation, but that’s Chamberlain’s big point: In an era of creative destruction, some of us are riding the up elevator while others are heading down—and the situation might be reversed next week.

Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2008:

Freelance writer Chamberlain’s exploration of the social and professional choices of Generation X is a knowledgeable and well-written addition to the growing library of books devoted to the “alternative” generation. The author focuses primarily on the way that the young men and women of the 1990s made their money, and does a nice job conveying the tough economic fortunes of the beginning of that decade and the creative and financial boom of the Internet’s early days, as well as the eventual fallout when it went bust. Chamberlain uses each chapter of the book to address a specific aspect of the generation in question, often using a combination of cultural touchstones and sociology books to illustrate her point; a chapter about Gen-X relationships ponders the Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise and quotes extensively from Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History. Often, the text is taken over by monologues from Gen-Xers themselves, who
narrate their winding paths through the job market, usually ending in creative and relatively fulfilling jobs as a result of their ingenuity. While the book is full of interesting mini-arguments, including an entertaining takedown of Ethan Watters’s Urban Tribes, it doesn’t present a cohesive vision. Rather, it serves to illuminate the many disparate pockets of a group that continues to resist easy categorization.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 3, 2008:

Cool word, slackonomics. Cool idea, too, to meld attitude and what Lisa Chamberlain admits is an intuitive grasp of economics in her prickly, entertaining book about the changing of the guard from baby boomer to Gen Xer. Studded with insight into pop culture and today’s turbulent society, “Slackonomics” aims to give Gen X, or people in their 30s and 40s, its props. … She has a testy, smart style, is well read and peppers her book with factoid strips and graphics. … The fluid marketplace Chamberlain explores is hard to pin down, let alone navigate. But she and her peers bespeak a flexibility and fearlessness suggesting they will not only survive, but also prevail — and, perhaps, guide the world to greater sense. [Click here for the entire review.]

Forbes.com, August 14, 2008

Slackonomics is no hippy-dippy “everything’s going to be OK” self-help book. “Diminished expectations had become the defining force for this post-hippy, post-punk generation,” she writes. It’s not all gloom and doom, however. Chamberlain argues that these problems have made Generation X uniquely resilient and flexible. [Click here for the entire review] [And here for an author interview]