Amazon.com Review
It's the great contemporary struggle--finding work that satisfies the soul and fills the purse. In the old days, you'd have mended shoes, tempered iron, or tilled the fields, and if there was food on the table and your children were healthy, you'd count yourself a success. But those times are long past. Now there's the pernicious concept of job satisfaction to deal with, plus requisite baubles like 27-inch televisions, Pentium-chip computers, and name-brand sneakers to purchase, and so the pressure mounts. If you're vying with notions like downsizing and job marketability, it's worth looking at the jobs of the future. Shelly Field lists 100 careers, from geriatric social worker and travel agent to CAD specialist and pet sitter. For each, she provides a job description, earning range, recommended education and training, and necessary skills, personality traits, experience, and qualifications. She then spends a couple pages discussing just what the job is like, what the employment opportunities are, and what the future holds for that position.

Where do you apply if you're fresh out of college and mom's saying, "Get a job?" With a mortgage to pay off, do you stay in the old job you hate or make a change? Shelly Field's guide to careers of the 21st century doesn't answer these questions directly, it doesn't replace old-fashioned soul-searching and creative initiative, nor does it tell you what to do if you've got the soul of a poet with champagne tastes, but it's a great, practical place to start the process of matching you (your interests and skills) with reality (the job market). --Stephanie Gold