What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age

In our chaotic modern world, where technology offers the empty promise of mobility and flexibility, in reality the lines between work and home, public and private, become increasingly blurred. Maggie Jackson, the national workplace writer for the Associated Press, has noticed home playing a secondary role to work in her reporting and her personal life. A mother of two, Jackson found herself bringing work home to spend more time with her family, only to hustle them off to bed early so she could get her work done. In What's Happening to Home? Jackson explores the ever-changing role of home in our lives. "I set out to make home more than a bit of life snatched on the fly, or a dusty ideal from the past," Jackson says. "Along the way, I learned that home is more important than I ever had realized. Without a home, we're hardly human."

Jackson updates our idea of home. The very word "home" conjures images of coziness, lawn mowers and Betty Crocker. What's Happening to Home? redefines that image without short-changing the work lives so many of us value. Jackson explores ways to preserve intimacy and caring at home without returning to rigid ideals of the past.

What's Happening to Home? goes beyond debates about square footage and working moms, and helps us start thinking about larger questions of the value of home for everyone. Jackson encourages constant evaluation of how our homes influence our lives to create private sanctuaries amenable to the modern world without losing the support, warmth and love everyone needs.