Disconnected: How Six People From AT&T Discovered the New Meaning of Work in a Downsized Corporate America

Rating:
Summary: A moving, sensitive, and compelling set of portraits...
Review: Barbara Rudolph has accomplished a very difficult task: she has completely humanized the relationships between people and their work, and has gotten six long-term, loyal employees of AT&T who were downsized (fired, dismissed) after many years of service to reveal their thoughts, feelings, fears and triumphs in the aftermath of that blow to their self-image, their self-esteem and their security. It is less an attack on America's corporate culture than it is a tribute to the essence of the people who are the real shapers of our economy and our culture. Rudolph, who according to the bio on the book,has been a business writer for major publications, obviously understands the corporate culture and sets her human stories in a very professionally rendered account of the changing nature of employment and of the corporation as family, then she introduces her subjects to fill in the important aspects of our attitudes toward work and the identities we shape through it. It's wonderful. And, I was first attracted ot the book by the back-cover blurbs from Richard Sennett and Earl Shorris, whose recommendations are once again justified.