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Moral Ambition
How to Find Your Purpose – the Guide to Making the Most out of your 80,000 Hours at Work
Moral Ambition
How to Find Your Purpose – the Guide to Making the Most out of your 80,000 Hours at Work
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Description
The antidote to apathy from the internationally bestselling author and 2025 BBC Reith lecturer Rutger Bregman
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
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'A fierce and brilliant call to arms for anyone who has been wondering whether there's more to life. (There is.) Bregman wants to change you, and he just might succeed. This is a wonderfully dangerous book' TIM HARFORD
'Gives us hope, humour and guidance at a time when all are in short supply' TIMOTHY SNYDER
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The average full-time worker will spend 80,000 hours at their job: are you making the most of them? Do you truly believe in what you do, day in, day out? Every day we're bombarded with methods, mantras and life hacks that promise us wellness and prosperity, while time and talent remain some of our most squandered resources.
What if you want to do something more with your limited time on the planet?
With moral ambition – the will to make the world a wildly better place – internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman shows us we can be both idealistic and successful, and change the world along the way. Uncovering the qualities that made the great change-makers of history so effective, he shows how we too can lend our talents to the biggest challenges of our time, from climate change to inequality to the next pandemic. With moral ambition, we can do more than be on the right side of history: we can make history itself.
This book won't make your life easier, but it should make it more meaningful. The question is: what will you do with it?
Moral Ambition is a must-read for anyone wondering what they should do with their working life, how to find their purpose and how to find something more worthwhile to do with their skills and talents.
As the 2025 BBC Reith Lecturer, Rutger Bregman presented 'Moral Revolution', a four part series:
-A Time of Monsters
-How To Start a Moral Revolution
-A Realist's Utopia
-Zoom Out
Available to listen on BBC Four
Product details
| Published | 15 Jan 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 304 |
| ISBN | 9781526685551 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Dimensions | 198 x 129 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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I believe [Rutger] calls himself a historian, he's not. He's a revolutionary in a sensible coat
Russell Crowe
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Rutger Bregman has become the voice in my head
Jameela Jamil
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A rallying cry ... His appeal is very much to the high-flyer, looking for a cause that will give the fullest moral satisfaction ... Yet he is also admirably realistic about the need to park one's own desire for a certain kind of sainthood, to accept the need for ordinary self-care so as to avoid falling victim either to burnout or - worse - to one's own mythology, and to remain clear about what measurable differences might look like ... Offers a bracingly hopeful perspective, insisting on the necessity of doing all you can to allow yourself to be sensitised and resensitised to that which eats away at the dignity not only of humanity but (an important element in Bregman's argument) of the entire living environment
Guardian
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An impassioned call on those who can to leave 'bullshit jobs' and tackle society's most pressing challenges. Presented as a 'how to guide' to changing the world. studded with insights and calls to action. In pithy pen portraits, Bregman sketches a cast of characters who challenge us to do more, be better and build coalitions for change... A paean to self-actualization and the idea that a small group of committed citizens can, indeed, change the world
Time Literary Supplement
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A brisk and persuasive case for ditching "mind-numbing, pointless, or just plain harmful jobs" and doing something more meaningful instead ... Bregman's un-preachy and persuasive writing style makes profound change look easy
Financial Times
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Bregman's ambitions are admirable. If even a small percentage of those who pick up this book are spurred to action, whether that's a charity run or a complete change in career, it's hard to disagree that it will have been worth his effort
Telegraph






















