Brigid Schulte is an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post and the Washington Post Magazine. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, she has won numerous writing awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her two children, Liam and Tessa, and her husband, Tom Bowman, Pentagon correspondent for National Public Radio.

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In her attempts to juggle work and family life, Brigid Schulte has baked cakes until 2 a.m., frantically (but surreptitiously) sent important emails during school trips and then worked long into the night after her children were in bed. Realising she had become someone who constantly burst in late, trailing shoes and schoolbooks and biscuit crumbs, she began to question, like so many of us, whether it is possible to be anything you want to be, have a family and still have time to breathe.

So when Schulte met an eminent sociologist who studies time and he told her she enjoyed thirty hours of leisure each week, she thought her head was going to pop off.

What followed was a trip down the rabbit hole of busy-ness, a journey to discover why so many of us ?nd it near-impossible to press the 'pause' button on life and what got us here in the ?rst place.

Overwhelmed maps the individual, historical, biological and societal stresses that have ripped working mothers' and fathers' leisure to shreds, and asks how it might be possible for us to put the pieces back together.

Seeking insights, answers and inspiration, Schulte explores everything from the wiring of the brain and why workplaces are becoming increasingly demanding, to worldwide differences in family policy, how cultural norms shape our experiences at work, our unequal division of labour at home and why it's so hard for everyone - but women especially - to feel they deserve an elusive moment of peace.

Every parent, every caregiver, every person who feels besieged by permanent busyness, must read this book

Why is life so insanely busy? What happened to "leisure" time? Tired of the modern hamster wheel, Brigid Schulte set out to find a better way to live. Overwhelmed is a passionate, funny, very human book

Features the author's personal search for balance alongside her advice for busy women

Startling ... May well do for time-poor workers that Lean In has done for guilt-ridden working mums

The very real and sometimes moving book is a masterly combination of social observation, interview, statistics and riveting human stories. Schulte's honesty is appealing

Thought-provoking ... Brigid Schulte takes to takes our headlong descent into multi-tasking madness

She says we turn leisure into work, thinking we are lazy if we're not 'doing something'. I couldn't agree more

Engaging . by turns a pop science explainer, self-help guide and subtle feminist polemic - aims to discover why some of us feel there simply aren't enough hours in the day ... This book's strength is mixing research and anecdote in a lively, accessible way, with a reporter's eye for detail

In one of the best sections of the book, Ms. Schulte interviews Pat Buchanan, the man who more than anyone else destroyed the prospect of a high-quality universal child care system in the United States

Brigid Schulte writes directly of her own cubicle experience, and it is not pretty

Too much to do? Stop and read this

For a fresh take on an eternal dilemma, Overwhelmed is worth a few hours of any busy woman's life - if only to ensure that she doesn't drop off the bottom of her own "To Do" list *****

Not only captures the conundrum so many people face but also offers some practical solutions. It's not a self-help book per se, but I found many of the anecdotes and stories personally instructive