mericans have long been known for our industry and ambition, but until recently, we also recognized the value of rest. The Puritans had a famously strict work ethic, but they also took their Sundays very seriously. In 1842, Henry David Thoreau observed, “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure”; a decade later he wrote, “A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book.” Post–Civil War captains of industry didn’t rise and grind, according to business journalist Bertie Charles Forbes: “No man goes in more whole-heartedly for sport and other forms of recreation than” industrialist Coleman du Pont, while Teddy Roosevelt “boisterously … enters into recreation” despite
