After Success: Fin-de-Siecle Anxiety and Identity

The end of the century is a good time to take stock of who we are and where we are going. Pahl's book is an accessible sociological exploration of the troubles many people are now experiencing in a new age of anxiety. Using interviews with a diversity of successful people, the author suggests that the insecurities now afflicting us are leading people to seek a new balance between work, family and other obligations. The meaning of "success" has become elusive.

Highly articulate, and offering vivid and memorable accounts of their lives, the men and women interviewed point out the problematic nature of success and the tensions it creates for the way we construct our distinctive self-identities in an age plunged into dramatic social change. Anxiety is a spur to success, but 'success', whatever that now means, often serves only to further such anxieties rather than reduce them. This brilliant book provides new insights into problems which affect not only the 'successful' but the majority of people living in modern societies.

After Success will appeal to a wide lay readership, as well as to those studying sociology, cultural studies and social theory.