In My Job My Self, Gini plumbs a wide range of statistics, interviews with workers, surveys from employers and employees, and his own experiences and memories, to explore why we work, how our work affects us, and what we will become as a nation of workers. Arguing that adults require work in the same way that children need play, Gini views work as a fundamental part of our humanity whose purpose is not merely to generate products but to produce emotionally healthy people.

A lively, humorous, unconventional mediation on the nature of work and identity -- with allusions to literature, economics, history, philosophy and psychology -- My Job, My Self speaks to every employed person who has yet to understand the costs and challenges of a lifetime of labor.