Books
99% Perspiration
99% Perspiration looks at the culture of work in American life and how work obsession influences culture, policy, and everyday life, all at the expense of the greater good.
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As the wealth gap widens, communities crumble, and Americans work more for less, Chandler crisscrosses the country interviewing mayors, teachers, generals, pastors, construction workers, and entrepreneurs to create a portrait of an America at war with itself over opportunity and the future.
Excerpts & Selected Media
Excerpt: How Work Became the Crisis of Our Era (LA Times)
Excerpt: The Myth of Opportunity Has Broken America (Time)
Appearance: Alex Wagner Tonight (MSNBC)
Appearance: Andrew Yang Forward Podcast
Appearance: Factually! With Adam Conover (Headgum)
Appearance: After Words (C-SPAN)
Appearance: Think (NPR)
Interview: The Roots of U.S. Work Culture (Smithsonian Magazine)
Feature: New Books Question the American Dream (PW)​
Feature: 2025 Must-Read Books (Next Big Idea Club)
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Reviews & Euphoric Praise
“99% Perspiration...is more than a mere diagnosis. It’s also a far-reaching study of how and why national myths are propagated and a ground-level account of the way we live and work now. It is, as they say, a good read, wrung from troubling realities.”
—The Los Angeles Times
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“A welcome call for a return to fairness and common sense.”
—Kirkus Reviews ​
As Chandler travels across the United States – talking with laborers, pastors, teachers and policy makers – he offers a hopeful vision for restoring the lost American dream. He urges people to have more meaningful conversations, to think like citizens instead of individuals…”
—Smithsonian Magazine
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“Chandler’s breezy writing style makes the book an easy read with plenty of eye-popping statistics and gut-wrenching anecdotes. More importantly, 99% Perspiration will make readers question their own relationship to work, what their jobs mean to them, and why employment is so integral to our identity.”
—Book Page
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“Chandler delivers compact portraits of various kinds of workers, from a car parts temp in North Carolina to an Indian émigré in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who, with his family, developed a barbecue sauce packing a powerful cannabis infusion...Such stories are fascinating, and Chandler uses them to great effect. They also speak to his vision of a country having a hard time defining itself.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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“An articulate critique of rags-to-riches mythology and government policies about labor in the United States.”
—Library Journal
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“Eye-opening...The history deflates myths of American meritocracy, and stories of ordinary individuals drive home the ill consequences of believing that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough.”
– Publishers Weekly
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“An intriguing and intelligent look at work in the United States, Adam Chandler has brought his humor and grace to an array of issues from stagnating wages to the hustle economy. Chandler has an uncanny ability to present deep histories of inequality, paint absorbing contemporary portraits of workers, and raise provocative questions about our cultural and social myths about working. An ode to anyone who has struggled to make ends meet or to find meaning from work, this book reminds us that another (work) world is possible!”
—DR. MARCIA CHATELAIN, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise
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“Adam Chandler’s 99% Perspiration is a wickedly smart and even hilarious takedown of the mythology of the American Dream. In an age of uncertainty and inequality, this is a necessary book.
—DEREK THOMPSON, author of On Work and Hit Makers
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“99% Perspiration is a passionate look at America’s broken economic system and how it could be fixed. It is expansive in scope and empathetic toward its subjects – everyday American workers who deserve so much more. A timely, necessary read.”
—SARAH KENDZIOR, New York Times bestselling author of The View From Flyover Country
“With relentless shoe-leather reporting, incisive analysis, and mordant humor, Adam Chandler has pierced the balloon of some very cherished myths about America's workplace exceptionalism.”
—SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN, author of Into the Bright Sunshine
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