Ann Swidler, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Talk of Love and co-author of Habits of the Heart. Her recent work on AIDS in Africa has appeared in Science and other publications.
For the "intravidual," life is BlackBerries, conferences, snippets of family time, and a constant desire to be elsewhere. But how many people really live like that?
Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety by Dalton Conley, Pantheon, 221 pages, $24.00