When Work Doesn't Work Anymore

With When Work Doesn't Work Anymore, former bigwig publisher Perle McKenna joins the Sarah Ban Breathnach (Simple Abundance) brigade of women advocating voluntary downsizing. Only she's armed with a tape recorder instead of a trowel, counting Gloria Steinem, Anna Quindlen, and Letty Pogrebin among some 200 other empathetic interviewees. Most buttress her elegant, well-thought-out argument that an outdated, unaccommodating — oh, all right, masculine — corporate culture is responsible for a generation of career gals' rankling unease re ''having it all.'' We are not our business cards! she insists. Yet she fails to adequately address those outside her privileged circle — those who, perhaps, never had business cards to begin with. B+