With vivid narrative and critical nuance, Adams reveals “care” as intimate yet asymmetrical, tender yet rancorous, and always hard work. An empathetic account of the braided threads of caring that universally, if unequally, entwine human experience. A wise and affecting book.

- Alondra Nelson, Institute for Advanced Study,

Rachel Adams has assembled a stunning collection of stories that bring the vivid dimensions of care to life: its everyday tasks and visceral embodiment, its psychological complications, and the macrohistorical trends that shape the intimacies of family and friendship. A necessary and original book for looking under the hood at care—a form of social infrastructure with constraints and liberations that many affirm but too few take seriously.

- Sara Hendren, author of <i>What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World</i>,

This book could not have been written by anyone but Rachel Adams. Only a literary scholar could discern the delicate formal details of the fictional and autobiographical narratives she dissects. Only a mother of a dependent child could know the inexpressible emotions that charge care. And only a driven researcher could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the legal, economic, feminist, and political aspects of care. Read this book if you are a parent, a child, a sibling, or a worker giving or receiving care.

- Rita Charon, MD, PhD, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons,