Were You Born on the Wrong Continent

How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life

Thomas Geoghegan

Tired of working ‘til you drop and not going anywhere? Try to imagine your life in a full-blown European social democracy—especially the German version. In an idiosyncratic, entertaining travelogue written in a “chatty, anecdotal style [that’s] appealingly digressive and winning” (Publishers Weekly), Thomas Geoghegan explains the appeal of “boring” Germany, where workers sit as directors on the big corporate boards and ordinary people have six weeks off and retire with pensions like golden parachutes. 

Free public goods, a bit of worker control, and whopping trade surpluses—the German version of “European socialism” doesn’t sound too bad. Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? explains where you might have been happier—or at least had time off to be unhappy properly. “Written with humor and candor, making for an easy, fun read” (AARP Bulletin), it is also a “timely, cogently argued, laugh-out-loud-funny book” (Katrina vanden Heuvel). And it tells us why Americans should pay attention to Germany, where ordinary people can work three hundred to four hundred hours less a year than we do and still have one of the most competitive economies in the world. 

Contents

·      Preface: I’m No “European Socialist”

Part One: Which Side of Paradise?

1. I Know No Europeans

2. Where You’d Be Happier—Or, the Story of Isabel and Barbara

3. I’m Sorry I Picked the Germans

Part Two: Berlin Diary

·      Preface

4. Germany Is Dark

5. Clash of Civilizations

6. After the Krise (2009)

·      Acknowledgments

·      Index

About the Author

Thomas Geoghegan is a practicing attorney and the author of several books, including the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Which Side Are You On?, In America’s Court, and See You in Court. He has written for The Nation, the New York Times, and Harper’s and lives in Chicago.