'Interns built the pyramids,' the great magazine The Baffler once declared. And that was just the beginning of their labors, as Ross Perlin demonstrates in this fascinating and overdue exposé of the wage labor without wages, the resumé-building servitude, at the heart of contemporary capitalism.
Benjamin Kunkel, a founding editor of n+1 and author of the novel Indecision A ... Read morebook that offers landmark coverage of its topic.
Andrew Ross
London Review of Books
Perlin contends that most internships are illegal, according to the Fair Labor and Standards Act, stripping people who are employees in all but name of workers' rights.
New Yorker
A portrait of how white-collar work is changing ... thought-provoking and at times jaw-dropping-almost a companion volume to Naomi Klein's celebrated 2000 exposé of modern sweatshops, No Logo.
Andy Beckett
Guardian
A compelling investigation of a trend that threatens to destroy 'what's left of the ordered world of training, hard work and fair compensation' ... Full of restrained force and wit, this is a valuable book on a subject that demands attention.
Anna Winter
Observer
[An] eye-opening, welcome exposé.
Sunday Times
This vigorous and persuasive book ... argues that the fundamental issue is the growing contingency of the global workforce.
Roger D. Hodge
Bookforum
Organizations in America save $2 billion a year by not paying interns a minimum wage, writes Ross Perlin in Intern Nation.
Economist
Well-researched and timely.
Daily Telegraph
[E]ye-opening ... The book tackles a sprawling topic with earnestness and flair.
Katy Waldman
Washington Post
Perlin ... has an eye for polemical effectiveness.
Times Literary Supplement
A timely book addressing the exploitation of the nation's younger workforce under the guise of the 'internship model.'
Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2011
Huffington Post
A serious and extremely well-written text that offers sophisticated historical material about the origins of internship and its impact on the individuals concerned, the firms that use it and the world of work more generally.
Cary L. Cooper
Times Higher Education
Perlin's attempt to understand internships as a symptom of wider trends in the economy ... makes the book such a fascinating read.
Spectator
When you are competing for jobs during a recession, the only thing worse than being exploited can be not being exploited. Yes, many internships are really crummy, but then some of them do ultimately lead to something ... which is why, when people have no access to internships at all, it makes them invisible.
Ross Perlin speaking to Kaya Burgess
Times of London
Perlin dissects the employment practices of some of the world's biggest corporations, inc¬luding Disney, which he accuses of replacing "well-trained, decently compensated full-timers" with an army of low-paid interns. But for employers that approach recruitment strategically, internships are typically a cost-albeit one they hope will pay off in better, happier recruits.
Financial Times
[Perlin's] exposé on the internship model initiates a critical conversation on internships ... his thoughtful book is necessary reading for the millions of young people trying to break into the working world through internships.
Publishers Weekly
That fact that it took this long for someone to write this book seems as blatantly wrong as the practice itself. Perlin provides a welcome, long-overdue and much-needed argument.
Kirkus Reviews
Perlin's writing is engaging and the questions he raises are valid ones in an increasingly competitive job market.
Library Journal
[A] blistering, highly entertaining attack on today's internship culture.
Boston Globe
Cloaked in the innocent idea of the intern, aggressive employers are using young people trying to get a foothold to weaken the leverage of existing workers, especially professionals. Ross Perlin gives us an account of another subterranean strategy to undermine working people in the US.
Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY Alas, the valuable internship institution is being widely and flagrantly abused, as Ross Perlin demonstrates in this eye-opening book. A huge chunk of the American workplace has been distorted in an unhealthy way, and Perlin provides not only the diagnosis but the beginnings of a prescription.
James Ledbetter, editor in charge of Reuters.com, and author of Unwarranted Influence The world has been waiting for this book. It's lucky that someone as thoughtful and politically aware as Ross Perlin was there to write it.
Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt and DIY U Few books have been written about the effect of internships, so this short book will be eye-opening for many. Students and parents should add it their reading lists.
Repps Hudson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
For critics such as Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, unpaid labor harms everyone in the labor market.
Alexandra Alper
Reuters
Intern Nation provides a wide-angle overview of an international system of labor subsidization masked as career opportunity-indeed, as a de rigueur component of baccalaureate and even postgraduate degree work, without which a young person cannot hope to secure a gratifying and adequately remunerative professional career in the twenty-first century.
Cecelia Tichi
Academe Magazine
[A] scathing look at the internship culture ...
Washingtonian
[Intern Nation] tracks how the explosion of internships in creative fields changed the entry level of many industries.
New York Times Critic's Notebook
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