All the Gold Stars, Rainesford Stauffer

From journalist and author of An Ordinary Age, an examination, dismantling, and reconstruction of ambition, where burnout is the symptom of our holiest sin: the lonely way we strive. Ambition--the want, the hunger, the need to achieve--is woven into America''s fabric from the first colonization to capitalism. From our first gold star assignment to acceptance at the "right" college to hustle and grinding our lives, we celebrate our drive, even as we gatekeep who is permitted to strive--and how visibly.

Even as we burn out. When we can''t even. When we know: work won''t love us back. All the Gold Stars looks at how the cultural, personal, and societal expectations around ambition are driving the burnout epidemic by funneling our worth into productivity, limiting our imaginations, and pushing us further apart.

Through the devastating personal narrative of her own ambition crisis, Stauffer discovers the common factors driving us all, peeling back layers of family expectations, capitalism, and self-esteem that dan.