20th Book Prize Events
The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University has awarded the Twentieth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship to Louis Hyman, for his book Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary, published by Penguin Random House in 2018.
All events free & open to the public!
Community Event
Wednesday, March 4, 2020 | 6:30-8:00 PM
George Bush Presidential Library and Museum’s Orientation Theater
1000 George Bush Dr W.
College Station, TX 77845
(Free parking in Lot 41)
How did the "gig economy" (workers paid by each task or project instead of through a salary or hourly wage) get started in America? How will the gig economy affect the future job prospects of Americans? How can we work together to envision the future of the workforce?
Join us for a public discussion of Hyman's book, facilitated by Dr. Jonathan Coopersmith (History, TAMU).
Louis Hyman talks about gig work and the American Dream. Listen below.
Award Presentation & Lecture 
Thursday, March 5, 2020 | 4:00-5:30 PM
311 Glasscock Building, Texas A&M
398 Spence St.
College Station, TX 77843
Refreshments will be served
Temp is the untold history of the surprising origins of the “gig economy”–how deliberate decisions made by consultants and CEOs in the 50s and 60s upended the stability of the workplace and the lives of millions of working men and women in postwar America, long before the digital revolution. The book argues that Uber is not the cause of insecurity and inequality in our country, and neither is the rest of the gig economy. The answer to our growing problems goes deeper than apps, further back than outsourcing and downsizing, and contests the most essential assumptions we have about how our businesses should work. As we make choices about the future, we need to understand our past.
The book is winner of the William G. Bowen Prize, was named a “Triumph” of 2018 by the New York Times book critics, and has been shortlisted for the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award. The New York Times writes that Temp is “Illuminating and often surprising…a book that encourages us to imagine a future that is inclusive and humane rather than sentimentalize a past that never truly was.”