The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacation

The great American fantasy is about leisure: wooded getaways, Caribbean cruises, white-water rafting, the lights of Las Vegas.Yet one in four Americans does not take a vacation at all. We know how to work hard but not how to play.What we really need, argues Al Gini, is some time off. The Importance of Being Lazy takes us on family road trips, to Disneyland, on shopping sprees, on extreme sports adventures, and into the ultimate vacation - retirement - asking why we venerate vacations and why "doing nothing" is a fundamental human necessity.

Al Gini is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and co-founder and Associate Editor of the journal Business Ethics Quarterly.