A few critics. That's not so bad, right? He got more than that when he was pushing to enforce child labor laws and bust up sweatshops at Labor. But Reich says the motivation for writing his latest book was largely to explore - and, of course, explain - his move. Maybe it was the critics who said that quitting his high-powered job was the coward's way out, that he had been needed on the front lines of Labor and he bugged out. That had to hurt a little.

The only pain in Reich's voice today, however, is when he talks about his old Washington job. "It was the best job I've ever had and probably will have," he says. "If you can figure out how to make a Cabinet-level job saner, I'd go back in a minute."

He doesn't expect Cabinet jobs to get sensible anytime soon. Worse, he doesn't expect your job to get much better either. What Reich found in his research for this book and his travels as an in-demand speaker is that America has a new definition of success, and it's not one most people will like. Work is taking over our lives, advertising is taking over our consciousness, communications gadgets are taking over our attention, and the widening gap between rich and poor is setting us up for serious trouble. This understanding surprised him.

"As Secretary of Labor, my goal was to try to get more jobs and better wages for Americans, and after working hard at that role for a number of years, you can't help but feel jobs and wages are everything," Reich observes, setting himself up. "But, obviously, they're not. In the new economy, with unpredictable earnings, with the new intrusiveness of work - almost 24 hours a day, given cell phones and e-mails and faxes - and with the two tracks that are emerging, the fast and the slow track and the absences of gradations between; given all that, it's not simply a matter of having a job or even having decent pay.