Intern Nation How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy

Every year, between one and two million Americans work as interns.They famously shuttle coffee in a thousand newsrooms, congressional offices, and Hollywood studios, but they also deliver aid in Afghanistan, build the human genome, and pick up garbage. Ross Perlin's book is the first exposé of the exploitative world of internships, and its hardcover publication precipitated a torrent of media coverage in the US and UK. In this witty, astonishing, and serious investigative work, Perlin profiles fellow interns, talks to academics and professionals about what unleashed this phenomenon, and explains why the intern boom is perverting workplace practices around the world. Insightful and humorous, Intern Nation will transform the way we think about the culture of work.

Ross Perlin is a graduate of Stanford, SOAS, and Cambridge, and has written for, the New York Times, Time magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, Guardian, Daily Mail, and Open Democracy. He is researching disappearing languages in China.