The idea of collecting stories around the theme of work fascinates me; when I think of books about jobs, I see the white-collar drudgery of "Revolutionary Road," or, even more depressingly, the back-breaking drudgery of Zola's "Germinal," where one gets to learn exactly what it was like to work (and die) in the mines of nineteenth-century France (it really, really sucked).
Soon they would want better lives with more adventure and romance and less back-breaking work and death.
That would allow schools to update their textbooks more frequently and save students from having to carry back-breaking loads of textbooks home each night.
The city, they say, pays its street staff 1,000 roubles more in the snowy months to compensate for the back-breaking nocturnal clean-ups.
I submit that the real problem we face is not that robots will produce more than people while freeing us from mind-numbing, back-breaking toil.
This back-breaking work is rarely done by anyone for more than a year or two, so labor is scarce and turnover is intense.
More specifically, I read the bulk of the book on one long, back-breaking drive, over the lunar terrain of Paktika Province.
As Andy Murray moves deeper into the second week of Wimbledon, his muscles and his reflexes will draw ever more strongly on memories of Miami, where he periodically endures bouts of back-breaking conditioning work in sweltering heat.
"That started a divide within the African community on the plantation, because then those who were closer to the house had some of the less back-breaking work and therefore they felt that they were a bit more privileged".
When the family refuse to go, she takes off alone to her friend's ashram in Pondicherry, where back-breaking yoga sessions and tedious communal meditation rapidly segue into something more sinister.
