The Search

Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World

By: Bruce Feiler

Narrated by: Bruce Feiler

Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Find work you love. On your own terms.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Life Is in the Transitions comes a bold new road map for finding meaning and purpose in what you do, based on insights drawn from hundreds of life stories of Americans of all backgrounds.

America is at a once-in-a-generation turning point around work: unprecedented numbers are quitting their jobs, rethinking their routines, breaking away from stifling expectations. The most suffocating iron cage of all is the idea that each of us must follow a linear career—lock into a dream early, always climb higher, never stop until you reach the top. Few ideas have squandered more human potential.

Employing his signature, immersive approach, Bruce Feiler is known for taking complex challenges and converting them into actionable steps that can help each of us live with more fulfillment and joy. From thousands of hours of interviews, Feiler has distilled a powerful new vision of work: The people who are happiest don’t chase someone else’s dreams; they chase their own. Freed from outdated scripts, they identify what brings them meaning and write their own story of success.

The Search introduces an all-new toolkit for achieving that goal, 21 Questions to Find Work You Love. Practical and empowering, these questions will help you unearth the story of work you’ve been trying to tell your whole life—then go achieve it. You’ll discover:

· The upsides and downsides of work you learned from your parents;
· Why your childhood role model offers the best clue to what you should do now;
· Who is your waymaker;
· When to leave a job and when to stay;
· What is your purpose right now;
…and much more.

From a master storyteller who’s helped millions transform their lives for better, The Search arrives as the world reimagines the basic assumptions of work and offers a timely, urgent playbook for each of us to get the happiness we seek, the meaning we crave, and the success we deserve.

©2023 Bruce Feiler (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"In The Search Mr. Feiler makes the case that, by reflecting on their personal experience and asking a few probing questions of themselves, people can craft ‘work stories’—that is, narratives that help people make sense of their various professional twists and turns and help people create their own definitions of success alongside the meaning they are looking for.” —The Wall Street Journal

“For years, Bruce Feiler has been writing and speaking about how we find meaning in our lives and nurture our spiritual selves, and he’s done it once again with a fantastic new book . . . The Search is invaluable for anybody who wants to find meaning in their lives and in their work. Which is to say, for everybody.” —Arianna Huffington, Thrive

“Bruce's first hand approach to his work, living the experiences he writes about, allows him to provide practical guidance on navigating life's transitions and finding reasons for why we’re all here.” —Elise Loehnen, Pulling the Thread podcast

Hire a professional

Good content. Had to listen at 1.25 speed. I would have preferred a professional narrator.

not very insightful

The book is really repetitive. I lost count on how many times it was some obscure story about a person overcoming all odds to realize their dreams.
I will also have to grant that each story was more and more heavy on lgbtq. It’s just felt heavy handed. I get it… they face obstacles and discrimination. Most people face obstacles that’s why it’s rewarding to accomplish goals. Does every story have to be about discrimination? I’d be just as bothered if every story was about mechanics solving a unique mechanical issue.
The author does identify the various jobs we all take on and how we take for granted they are actually addition jobs.
It could’ve been more insightful. The main theme was “find your work quake. find someone to champion you.” None of this is really relatable to the vast majority of jobs. Sometimes jobs are just jobs. They aren’t callings. I’d say this was selective in its scope.

I had higher hopes for this

I saw the author interviewed on TV and thought the subject was interesting. Unfortunately the stories are too shallow and there are too many and two non-mainstream to be of use for a lot of people. He mis reads Benjamin Franklin, and others, and clearly has a strong bias who wanders too much to be of much use. Maybe my expectations were just too high.

not as boring as it sounds

I was inspired by the stories and surprised by the research and appreciated the author's posture/perspective towards what people need to be human

Exactly what the world needs right now

I heard about this book on The Moth podcast and when I looked into it, it seemed exactly what I was looking for. Having just left a 20 year career in academia to pursue sustainability work (and feeling terrified and uncertain of myself), I was looking for inspiration, hope, and guidance. This book provided all of the above.

Keep a notepad handy while listening- You'll want to track your own revelations that surface as you listen to the stories of others and you'll want to make note of the questions posed so you can answer them for yourself.

I disagree with the reviewer who felt the stories were unrealistic. First, it's a fact that they are real stories - this is an ethnography of sorts - and second, I am sensitive to "fake" or forced-sounding stories and did not feel the slightest of this during this read.

Save your time

Not helpful as a how to for career transition purposes. Lots of repetitive ideology and personal accomplishments of others.

HEAVY on DEI and Woke nonsense. Disappointing.

I had much higher expectations given the author’s past works and how timely the topic is to so many readers circumstances. Distracting levels of leftist language and stories celebrating woke ideology make the reading experience feel divisive and disappointing. He actually dissuades heading the timeless advice extolled by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Dale Carnegie, and Stephen Covey primarily because they’re white men. Bruce instead helps you become more informed and inspired in your own Search by highlighting such relatable stories like the Native American indigenous language AI software developer and distillery owner for whey liquor using bio sustainable dairy industry byproducts. The non denominational lesbian mechanic who’s auto repair ministry didn’t have her garage burned down with the rest of the neighborhood during BLM riots because she had a peace sign in the window. The dedicated deep state servant who got fired for helping push one of the Trump impeachment charades. And the fifty something C level insurance exec and agency owner with Transvestic disorder that doesn’t actually actually change jobs but does acknowledge his privilege as a rich white man who then uses his HR department to inform the biological women who complained that under New York Law she now has the right to linger in the ladies room, drop a man size deuce, or whip out her penis for a quick stand up piss like all the other girls! Thanks Bruce, but I think a refund would help me go further in life than this book.