Picador / Macmillan, 2009. Good secondhand condition.

Why is that so many of the smartest people in Australia get to their 30s and realise that doing everything right has made for an existence they never really wanted? How is that so many of our best and brightest get sucked into being corporate lawyers and management consultants and living lives of quiet desperation? The Pin Striped Prison is a funny, frightening look at how big firms seduce brilliant students into joining the corporate world, with all its perks and excesses, and at what happens next. Crazy work hours swallow these young professionals' lives, just as dry cleaning, taxis and take-away food swallow their large salaries. And by the time they discover their work is fundamentally boring, they are usually captives of the debts they've incurred to get a lifestyle that will compensate them for their life. What does it mean for us as a nation when so many of our cleverest people are siphoned off from careers in which they could be doing something useful? The Pin Striped Prison is a smart, witty look at the consequences of selling your soul.