The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are

by David M. Henkin

An investigation into the evolution of the seven-day week and how our attachment to its rhythms influences how we live

We take the seven-day week for granted, rarely asking what anchors it or what it does to us. Yet weeks are not dictated by the natural order. They are, in fact, an artificial construction of the modern world.
 
With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources—including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries—David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. Reconstructing how weekly patterns insinuated themselves into the social practices and mental habits of Americans, Henkin argues that the week is more than just a regimen of rest days or breaks from work, but a dominant organizational principle of modern society. Ultimately, the seven-day week shapes our understanding and experience of time.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Microhistory, Historical, American History, Religion

Audiobook

First published November 16, 2021

About the author

David M. Henkin is Margaret Byrne Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His previous books include The Postal Age, City Reading, and (with Rebecca McLennan) Becoming America: A History for the 21st Century. He lives in San Francisco, CA, and Bozeman, MT.

Reviews

[Michelle Curie · Rating 2 out of 5]

We've probably all had that thought of time just being a crazy thing to exist, but what about the week? When I saw the title of this book, I stopped in my tracks and paused for a second. I suddenly realised that, yes, wasn't the construct of the week actually really unnatural? And yet so fundamental to how we live our lives? I was ready to embark on this journey.



The Week starts out with making an interesting point: The week just doesn't make any sense. There's nothing in the natural world that hints at a seven day cycle and yet it has survived as a construct for literally millennia. That repeating cycle has been around for around 2.000 (!) years and so Henkin takes us on a journey through time and space, walking us through the evolution of this odd little construct.

Henkin is a historian, so this isn't necessarily a sociological or psychological study as much as it is a very focussed history lesson. This isn't boring per se, but I personally came to the conclusion that I didn't actually need to read an entire book about this subject. Henkin relies on diaries and other physical relicts from the past to seek for hints at how the week was perceived at different points in time in the United States, but to me personally, the results weren't mind-blowing. Sure, social practices and mental habits have changed, but I had to realise that I didn't really care if people at some point did their washing on Tuesdays.

Maybe this is me and if I were more of a history buff this would have been captivating, but the most interesting passages to me were those where Henkin derived from retelling the past and allowed some space for thought play, like speculating if losing track of what day of the week it was was part of what made us feel so lost during the start of the pandemic. We clearly seem to be in need of structure to experience a sense of order and to be able to put our own memories into context.

Anyways, I guess this just wasn't for me. And yet, I am glad I can proceed living this Monday, which it is today, out as I do every Monday. After all, this is how I like to structure my week.

[Holly McIntyre · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t understand how a book that is so fascinating and thought-provoking can, at the same time, be so awkward. The premise: how we humans think about and divide up time is affected by available culture and technology such as printing (weekly vs daily newspapers), postal schedules (that permit only certain times for exchange of correspondence), and printed, dated, blank diaries that facilitate the pinning down of personal events to a specific day and date. A somewhat underdeveloped premise is that the combination of the asynchronous access to information on the internet and pandemic induced sheltering at home has ripped apart any communal sense of time and by extension any sense of community as well. These broad ideas are so important to think about!

And, yet … the expression of these ideas is so … awkward. The narrative is littered with specialist terms like “dominical” and “hebdomadal” — OK, I’ve studied French and Latin, I can figure out what these mean, but why? Why throw intentional roadblocks before readers whose vocabulary may not be so exotic? Also, the obvious Judeo-Christian origins of the concept of a “week” is barely acknowledged and alternative, non-Western and/or non-literate ways of conceptualizing time are left unexplored. This book succeeds better in raising interesting questions than in answering them.

[Elena Calistru · Rating 4 out of 5]

O carte foarte interesantă și plină de istorie despre cum a ajuns omenirea să se organizeze și să se gândească în termeni de săptămână. E un studiu de caz (academic și uneori cam prea plin de detalii) privind felul în care se raportează oamenii la săptămână, în America de secol 19. Cu toate acestea, concluziile și observațiile cred că pot fi cu ușurință generalizate. Și e absolut fascinantă tranziția de la săptămâna percepută religios (Sabbath) la săptămâna transformată de muncă și industrializare sau la săptămâna ghidată de cluburi, de social ori de înclinații habituale. La fel, e super fascinant cum a ajuns scrisul în jurnal sau reflecția asupra unei săptămâni să devină un obicei atât de extins.
Cartea se încheie înainte de pandemie, dar epilogul și dilemele sale sunt cât se poate de relevante, ceea ce înseamnă că cercetarea trece testul ditamai crizei acceleratoare - cum influențează lumea digitală non-stop și e-commerce percepția noastră despre săptămână? Dar automatizarea? Dar fluidizarea muncii?
Foarte bună și pentru cei care vor doar să o răsfoiască, aș zice eu.

[M Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected considering the subject matter. As someone who is obsessed with calendars and time tracking I found the history of how the calendar and days of the week came to be fascinating. I learned so much and loved the fun excerpts from various journals and letters used as examples throughout the text. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much you didn't know about how our 7 day week came about!

Thanks to Libro.fm, Yale Books and Dreamscape Media for an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews can also be seen at www.instagram.com/justonemoorebook.

[Evelina | AvalinahsBooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

How I read this: Free audiobook copy received through Libro.fm

I couldn't have imagined you could write such a long book about how the week works and why it works that way. But for the life of me, I can't understand how it got through editing that while the author respectfully uses enslaved people (as opposed to 'slaves'), and yet still refers to Native Americans as 'Indians'. Aside from that, the content is okay - but there were A LOT of boring places. So much of this book is dedicated to giving you exact statistics on how many weddings and how many hangings there were on given days of the week, and I'm not sure I want or even need to know it in such detail. Some of the trivia was certainly interesting (apparently, back in the day everyone washed their clothes on the same exact day as everyone else, which was Monday..?) But for most of these little facts, I found myself kind of bored. It's good I had the audiobook version, because it's a good book to have on in the background while you're showering or doing the dishes (or even going to sleep..), but if this was a printed book or ebook, I'm not sure I would have persevered.

I thank the publisher and libro.fm for giving me a free copy of the audiobook in exchange to my honest review. This has not affected my opinion.

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[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine yourself just casually dropping “omg why do we have Mondays?!!” early morning before work. David Henkin — emerging out of a pile of dusty old archive papers — would totally go “I AM HAPPY YOU ASKED COS ACTUALLY…!!!” which would turn out to be an unnecessarily long and chaotic — but endearingly enthusiastic — monologue about his super niche and obscure topic. Then, a distant voice from outside the room echoes: “On Wednesdays we wear pink!!!”

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it was the reader, Pete Cross, but I felt like I was listening to someone's master's thesis. Title notwithstanding this is not a broad history of the week down through the ages, but a minute examination of 19th century American records and references, and the author manages to make dry reading of both the generalizations and the specific examples (and there are way too many of the latter). Still, it got me thinking about the week, which is a bizarro construct made up of an arbitrary number of days unlinked to any astronomical or earthly pattern--and yet with uncommon staying power in our culture and a lot of other ones (though by no means all). Someone smarter than I could no doubt extract something meaningful about human nature from that.

[Nick Ferraro · Rating 3 out of 5]

A niche book about a niche topic, the books best features are unfortunately its biggest downfalls. The level of detail and precision is far too academic for a book of this nature, and definitely make it a tedious read. There was some interesting nuggets in the first could have chapters, but about 2/3 of the way through I had to put it down. If you have a weird pet interest with the development of time keeping in the early United States, this will probably be your favorite book. If you’re a casual reader, look elsewhere

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Saadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deeply disappointed. Not an investigation really. Would have also benefited from significant editing.

[Patrick Funston · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this would be better than it was. A bit heavy on quotes from old diaries… I thought it’d have more historical sociology and psychology. It was fine, but not a barn burner.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy the book, but I found the discussion rather dry, particularly the long segments dedicated to discussions of diary entries and how people kept track of the days (wrong date, correct day; right date, wrong day; only date; only day; etc.). I did think some of the discussion of how people lost track of the meaning, such as Nathaniel Kleitman's sleep studies and discussion of people traveling (which I think everyone has experienced) was very interesting, as well as discussions of Soviet attempts to change the duration of the week. I do think that the author missed out on including stronger discussion of how the pandemic has changed the work week, although that may be due to lack of research available on the topic yet. Overall, I gleaned some interesting tidbits from the book.

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the amount of work that went into researching this, but I found the format unengaging.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This nonfiction title explores an interesting and new-to-me topic, which is the obvious yet rarely-considered point that the seven-day cycle we know as a week is entirely cultural, having no relation to observable patterns in nature like a day (one rotation of the earth on its axis, measured in a period of light and then one of darkness), month (one revolution of the moon around the earth, measured in its appearing to wax and wane when seen from here), or year (one trip of the earth around the sun, measured in the changing of the seasons). Although the week may seem just as natural to us as these, its length of time is wholly arbitrary -- and in fact, there are some cultures that did not develop such a concept, with the modern-style week really only establishing a global dominance in the past two hundred years.

As author David M. Henkin details, we use the artificial structure of weeks to divide work from leisure, but also to organize our recurring commitments (like a class that meets each Wednesday) and to take regular inventory of our lives in terms of last week / this week / next week. Even historical calendar reforms that alter the month and date have generally left the progression of weekdays alone, and in that steady unfolding, particular days with their associated activities come to acquire certain individual characteristics for us. Accordingly, we are unsettled whenever we realize we've gotten the day wrong, or even simply when we experience, e.g. a Tuesday that doesn't feel like a Tuesday for whatever reason. In the height of the early Covid-19 pandemic, amid usual scheduled routines getting disrupted by widespread lockdowns and telework, that sort of untethering was commonly reported as days and weeks stretching uncomfortably into one long indistinguishable span that some sardonically nicknamed "Blursday." In a somewhat roundabout fashion, this work attempts to get at why people reacted so strongly to the perceived lack of that traditional framework, and how we continue to rely upon the week to apply order to our existence.

Unfortunately, while such provocative ideas are floated throughout the text, the writer primarily focuses on his own existing area of expertise, which is the journal-keeping habits of nineteenth-century America. I believe the intent here is to showcase the different uses of the week that were then entering into common practice, but it reads more as just a dry catalog of recitation tenuously linked to Henkin's surrounding theoretical thesis. He spends a lot of space, for instance, discussing the evidence that Thursday was once a popular day for weddings, but then doesn't build to any specific conclusions from that. I would have loved a book that actually flowed from the discussion raised in the Introduction, but I don't think this one ever quite gets there for me.

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[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a quite detailed exploration into the origins and survival of the seven-day week, which unlike months or years, has no basis in astronomical cycles. I enjoyed reading this book, although it was a bit ponderous at times.

Without a doubt, the Jews maintained a seven day week ever since it became important to note which day was the Sabbath; for the same reason, Christians and Muslims kept track with a seven day calendar to denote their weekly holy days. However, in the industrialized American urban Northeast, the week became important, partly due to industrial workers being paid routinely on Saturdays, and because it worked well with school scheduling. A good bit of discussion in the book has to do with diaries and journals during the 19th century, and more discussion has to do with the “feel” of certain days as opposed to other days. (In my far-ago youth, groceries stores were closed on Sundays, and my (Catholic) family did grocery shopping on Wednesdays because all the Protestants were in Church on that day. Later in my life, I was corporate, with a Monday to Friday schedule; and when I worked at a casino, my schedule was Friday through Tuesday. ) There is a discussion of the Around the World in Eighty Days plot point; neither Fogg or Passepartout realizes that they lost a day when crossing what later was called the International Date Line, so they thought they had lost the bet by one day. And quite a few people are quoted that, in later times, have become disoriented crossing the Line, and having a date and day of the week drop out of their calendars. While there have been efforts made to reform the calendar (the French tried during the Revolution, and the Soviets tried as well), mostly by having thirteen months of twenty-eight days, usually the efforts have met with resistance because under such a system there would be days outside of the week system. Even now, in the modern age of Zoom meetings and Google calendars, the week persists, and it does not appear to be going away anytime soon.

I very much enjoyed reading this book; I will note that it is worth checking out the Notes section, as in many entries there is additional reading material.

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at the history of "the week" as we know it today—why it's seven days, why certain things happen on certain days, why the weekend exists, how months and years got involved, etc. If you ever stop and think about how our concept of time is arbitrary, then you'll probably enjoy this book!

My favorite tidbit I learned was that at one point, some people argued that each month should have four weeks, just twenty-eight days, with the first always starting on a Monday (so basically every first of the month would be on a Monday), and then New Year's Day would be its own day, just hanging out between December 28 and January 1. And then for leap years, they would add in another day after New Year's Day, called Leap Day or something like that. This obviously did not win the vote for the modern calendar, but it certainly would've made remembering the day of the week and the date easier!

This book goes deep into the history of dates and calendars, even reading out excerpts from people's journals. The audio did get a bit boring in parts, which is why I didn't rate this higher, but it was definitely still an interesting read.

Thanks so much to Libro.fm, Dreamscape Media, and the author for my ALC!

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.1

I think most of the negative reviews here, including my own, are the result of a narrow academic book being marketed as something that it very much is not. My instruct is that, in an effort to reach a much broader audience, this manuscript was mashed into hole it simply didn't fit.

To start with, contrary to the books sweeping title, this is a history of the week only in America and only in the 1800s. Bizarrely, there is not even an introductory chapter explaining the weeks deep origins. In addition, the book is narrowly crafted to support an argument that seems shaky and, more importantly, relatively uninteresting: that the week matters in itself and not, even derivatively, due to organization around the sabbath or work schedules. While I generally like an argument focused structure, Henkin never explains *why* his argument matters, even if he is correct.

To his credit, the book is very well researched and the prose is not dull. I particularly liked his creative use of an array of different types of archival sources to support his argument from multiple angles, levels of analysis, and facets of life.

[wellreadtraveler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an unusual book I was interested in trading it. Ever had that argument about the calendar week starting on a Monday and your spouse saying it starts on Sunday? I mean the weekend is Saturday and Sunday so how can Sunday start the week? Luckily I know this isn’t just my debate because when you buy pre-printed calendars you can actually choose a Monday or a Sunday start date. Let me tell you if you have one year with a Monday start date and then you get a new calendar for the new year with a Sunday start date good luck moving over your birthdates and special events I swear I’ve messed that up several times so now I am a Monday through Sunday calendar kind of girl.
I found this book very interesting, I mean I never really thought about how the calendar first came to and who decided the names of the months and weeks. Being a paper calendar girl I found this book to be very cool.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Audiobook) (4.5 stars) This work looks at a concept that is both so critical to modern existence, but also, a concept that really has not basis n reality aside from the human construct. That is the idea of the week. There is no geologic or astronomical basis for this, but over time, and in particular, over the past 2-3 centuries, the grouping of days into weeks, primarily a seven day week, has come to define the actions, activities and thoughts of humans as they go about their lives.

This work takes a concept that we don’t really give a lot of thought about and brings it to life. The depth of research and history the author had to slug through to put this together is very impressive. You come to learn a great deal about the idea of the week, why it is the way it is, and the thus far unsuccessful efforts to upend this completely human concept.

Got more out of this work than I thought I would. Worth the time to read, no matter the format.

[Yitzchok · Rating 2 out of 5]

Public schooling had been a prominent ideal among many of the nation’s founders. Thomas Jefferson’s celebrated vision of national expansion, canonized in the land ordinances enacted by Congress in the 1780s, imagined future states composed of townships, each six miles square, and stipulated that every township would reserve one lot for a school. But the injunction to create schools did not instantly produce mass education. That culture arose over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century and gained steam in the 1840s, as reformers in and out of state governments began funding school expansion and advocating universal attendance for both children and adolescents. …Between 1840 and 1850, school attendance among white children ages five to nineteen rose from 38 percent to 51 percent. – Page 84

[AJ Payne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sounded super interesting. A topic I had never really considered before - the week, an arbitrary set of repeating days with names. I figured it had existed for a very long time and was relatively universal. Not so. Sounds really interesting right? Well, this book came across more like this dude just wanted to read a bunch of diaries from the 1800s to us. So while it did have some interesting insights and tidbits, it was interspersed with lots of ‘oh look, Hattie from 1832 wrote that she liked to do laundry on Mondays. That was really common for the day. But Mary wrote she did it on Wednesdays. Silly Mary. (Obviously this is hyperbole, but honestly, great swathes that went on for far too long were this.)

Anyway, really engaging parts were to be found here. I’m just glad I listened to it or I’m not sure I would have ever gotten through.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 2 out of 5]

It remains a noteable historical anomaly that that none of the major societies that track seven day cycles in the last millenium ever disagreed, either internally or with one another, about what day of the week it was. Even as they disputed hierarchy or meaning of those days, and even when they differed over the date and month.

Really cool premise, but disappointing. Far too much of this book explained not how the 7 day week came to be, but how the United States 150 years ago cemented a 7 day work-week cycle. There were a few interesting asides, such as when Post-Revolutionary France and the early Soviet Union tried, and failed, to restructure the week.

[Xylia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish that Henkin had’ve taken Zerubavel’s ‘The Seven Day Circle’ as a starting point and used this book as a chance to write about an updated construction of time keeping. He did discuss modern changes to time in the introduction and epilogue (including acknowledging that it is necessary to push beyond Zerubavel’s research from 1989), but the actual chapters felt like work that’s already been done (although I do acknowledge that Henkin is a historian, not a sociologist). One of the later chapters was a little painful as he detailed (for what felt like quite a long time) people writing incorrect dates in old diaries.

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed learning how the modern American week has been formed and if that week is still current. There is lots of thoughts on how "losing" time can affect individuals. Thoughts about how your position in time can affect your outlook on time as a whole - example summer looks different based on how far from the equator you live - AK has days of full sunshine, where somewhere like HI will have the same length of day all year round, that minor change can really mess with you mentally. This one does seem to be repetitive but it's expected because of the topic, you can't get away from using certain words or terms. Overall, interesting and worth discussion.

[Daniel Silliman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm jealous I didn't write this book. The idea is wild and stupid and so smart, a cultural history of how we experience weeks, digging into the technology and social practices that shape the sense of time. Henkin does incredibly innovative work, finding news ways to tease people's perceptions and assumptions and feelings out of the archival record of 19th century American newspapers, court room transcripts, letters and diaries. He raises some incredibly compelling questions and challenged some of my ideas about time and how people experience their days. I know some people will not get into this at all, but I'm a big fan of this book.

[Virginprune · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much in need of editorial oversight.
The subject is interesting, and the author knowledgeable, but the book doesn't really hit the spot.
Stripped of the voluminous reference material and of repetition and duplication, this could make an excellent Ted Talk.
To be the book I had hoped for, it needs to be far more clearly organised, and the subject matter needs a comprehensive overhaul. The meat of the text focuses on evidence from individuals' records in 19th Century USA. Widening the remit, and developing a clear theme, would produce a far more interesting book.

[Mohan Vemulapalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are" is an authoritative and deeply detailed account of how the week came to be a prominent organizing factor in American life during the 19th century. The level of detail in this book is overwhelming and the conclusions are relatively straightforward and do not do a great deal to advance the understanding of the period. This book is likely to be most interesting to those interested in 19th century social history and extreme calendar geeks.

[Anomilie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admire the author for being able to fill the contents of a book about a narrow subject, the week, that is then narrowed down to use nineteenth century American as a source for example upon example. Unfortunately these examples aren't collated, they're just dumped and connect with fancy words, but in reality not much information is conveyed. Such a pitty that the marvel promised by the title and the blurb didn't unfold

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook
This was surprisingly interesting. It is a topic I have not thought about before, but a lot of the ideas and research presented here were fascinating.
Possibly this book was more enjoyable in audio format than text, as other reviewer found it boring. I did not have that experience. I agree that the section that focused on individual journal entries was probably the least compelling, but it also provided a set of historical examples that supported the author's arguments.

[Jennifer Elias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so glad my local bookstore featured this book! The author writes engagingly about a structure that so many of take for granted, tracing how Americans gradually placed meanings on different days of the week, going beyond week/weekend. Henkin unearthed evidence as varied as menus, school schedules, and home advice guides all of which are interesting in themselves as well. Strongly recommended!