Ada Calhoun Presents Why We Can’t Sleep

When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too?

Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.

Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to “have it all,” Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take “me-time,” or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order.

In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.

Ada Calhoun is the author of the memoir Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, named an Amazon Book of the Month and one of the top ten memoirs of 2017 by W magazine; and the history St. Marks Is Dead, one of the best books of 2015, according to Kirkus and the Boston Globe. She has collaborated on several New York Times bestsellers, and written for the New York Times, New York, and The New Republic.

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain On Fire: My Month Of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain, and, most recently, The Great Pretender. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Karen Abbott is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City, American Rose, and Liar Temptress Soldier Spy, named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and Amazon. Her new book, The Ghosts of Eden Park, is an instant New York Times bestseller, an Indie Next pick, an Amazon best book of August, and a top fall title for both Newsweek and Publishers Weekly.

This event is free!