Waiting for the Weekend

“We work,” Aristotle wrote, “in order to have leisure.” Today, this is still true. But is the leisure that Aristotle spoke of-the freedom to do nothing-the same as the leisure we look forward to each weekend?

There have always been breaks from the routine of work-taboo days, market days, public festivals, holy days-we couldn't survive without them. In Waiting for the Weekend, Witold Rybczynski unfolds the history and evolution of leisure time in Western civilization, from Aristotle, through...