"Man Is Born Free, but He Is Everywhere in Cubicles"

"Mr. Saval closes by observing that, with the rise of freelancing and other forms of what he calls 'precarious employment,' work 'appears to be moving not forward but back: back to an earlier era of insecurity.' Many of the career paths once taken for granted are vanishing. 'A new sort of work, as yet unformed, is taking its place.'

"I no longer work in a cubicle. I’ve exchanged my short leash for a somewhat longer one, and work from home. But you never know, in America, when a cubicle might again be your future."

Dwight Garner in The New York Times reviews Nikil Saval's Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.