Free Ebook Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford
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Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford
Free Ebook Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford
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Review
"It's appropriate that [Shop Class as Soulcraft] arrives in May, the month when college seniors commence real life. Skip Dr. Seuss, or a tie from Vineyard Vines, and give them a copy for graduation.... It's not an insult to say that Shop Class is the best self-help book that I've ever read. Almost all works in the genre skip the "self" part and jump straight to the "help." Crawford rightly asks whether today's cubicle dweller even has a respectable self....It's kind of like Heidegger and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."-Slate "Matt Crawford's remarkable book on the morality and metaphysics of the repairman looks into the reality of practical activity. It is a superb combination of testimony and reflection, and you can't put it down."-Harvey Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University "Every once in a great while, a book will come along that's brilliant and true and perfect for its time. Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft is that kind of book, a prophetic and searching examination of what we've lost by ceasing to work with our hands-and how we can get it back. During this time of cultural anxiety and reckoning, when the conventional wisdom that has long driven our wealthy, sophisticated culture is foundering amid an economic and spiritual tempest, Crawford's liberating volume appears like a lifeboat on the horizon."-Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots "This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving."-Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman "Matt Crawford has written a brave and indispensable book. By making a powerful case for the enduring value of the manual trades, Shop Class as Soulcraft offers a bracing alternative to the techno-babble that passes for conventional wisdom, and points the way to a profoundly necessary reconnection with the material world. No one who cares about the future of human work can afford to ignore this book."-Jackson Lears, Editor in Chief, Raritan "We are on the verge of a national renewal. It will have more depth and grace if we read Crawford's book carefully and take it to heart. He is a sharp theorist, a practicing mechanic, and a captivating writer."-Albert Borgmann, author of Real American Ethics "Shop Class as Soulcraft is easily the most compelling polemic since The Closing of the American Mind. Crawford offers a stunning indictment of the modern workplace, detailing the many ways it deadens our senses and saps our vitality. And he describes how our educational system has done violence to our true nature as 'homo faber'. Better still, Crawford points in the direction of a richer, more fulfilling way of life. This is a book that will endure."-Reihan Salam, associate editor at The Atlantic, co-author of Grand New Party "Crawford reveals the satisfactions of the active craftsman who cultivates his own judgment, rather than being a passive consumer subject to manipulated fantasies of individuality and creativity."-Nathan Tarcov, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago"Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls "manual competence," the ability to work with one's hands. According to the author, our alienation from how our possessions are made and how they work takes many forms: the decline of shop class, the design of goods whose workings cannot be accessed by users (such as recent Mercedes models built without oil dipsticks) and the general disdain with which we regard the trades in our emerging "information economy." Unlike today's "knowledge worker," whose work is often so abstract that standards of excellence cannot exist in many fields (consider corporate executives awarded bonuses as their companies sink into bankruptcy), the person who works with his or her hands submits to standards inherent in the work itself: the lights either turn on or they don't, the toilet flushes or it doesn't, the motorcycle roars or sputters. With wit and humor, the author deftly mixes the details of his own experience as a tradesman and then proprietor of a motorcycle repair shop with more philosophical considerations." -Publishers Weekly, Starred review "Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Crawford presents a fascinating, important analysis of the value of hard work and manufacturing. He reminds readers that in the 1990s vocational education (shop class) started to become a thing of the past as U.S. educators prepared students for the "knowledge revolution." Thus, an entire generation of American "thinkers" cannot, he says, do anything, and this is a threat to manufacturing, the fundamental backbone of economic development. Crawford makes real the experience of working with one's hands to make and fix things and the importance of skilled labor. His philosophical background is evident as he muses on how to live a pragmatic, concrete life in today's ever more abstract world and issues a clarion call for reviving trade and skill development classes in American preparatory schools. The result is inspired social criticism and deep personal exploration. Crawford's work will appeal to fans of Robert Pirsig's classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and should be required reading for all educational leaders. Highly recommended; Crawford's appreciation for various trades may intrigue readers with white collar jobs who wonder at the end of each day what they really accomplished." -Library Journal
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About the Author
Matthew B. Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and served as a postdoctoral fellow on its Committee on Social Thought. Currently a fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, he owns and operates Shockoe Moto, an independent motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia.
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Product details
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (April 27, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143117467
ISBN-13: 978-0143117469
Product Dimensions:
5 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.0 out of 5 stars
469 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#27,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I really wanted to like this book - all the way through the very last page as I forced myself to struggle to the end through the ramblings of the, "I believe in progressive republicanism." declaration. I even agree with much of what he has to say but...So much of the book is lost in the meandering of poor research, academics, wistful nostalgia for a past he never experienced and poorly formed arguments that it was hard to buy what he's selling, even though I'm a returning customer. I found very little substance related to "soulcraft" throughout the text and frankly wished he'd spent more time sharing what he learned from the shop teachers and mentors he mentions but never fully explores. The constant switch from the dedication to craft and work in the trades as sometimes related but separate and at others equal in all ways is simply wrong and confusing. I hate to be the one to break the news but not everyone in the trades has any interest in mastery of craft or is a richer or more enlightened human from their work. The author posits that white collar work is devoid of all meaning and lacks the ability to measure self against product - which in itself is worth a whole discussion - but there many in the fields of labor that rise to excellence and personal mastery in the white collar ranks as well.In the end, craftsmanship reflects the individual commitment to mastery and excellence and that isn't recognized in this volume. Soul enriching craftsmanship isn't found in the majority of workers regardless of profession and I was disappointed to find so little in this book that resonated with me - an already convinced believer that time in my shop is healing for my soul.
I've read "Shop Class as Soulcraft" twice and have urged friends to read it, too. It's a super-interesting book, which draws on autobiography, phenomenology, and labor studies to make the argument that the manual trades are cognitively and morally superior to most white-collar "knowledge" work. Ironically, the argument is rather cerebral: the basic idea (or one of them anyway) is that manual workers are in touch with objective reality and must satisfy objective standards of excellence, whereas office workers spend much of their professional time managing perceptions of themselves. As someone who hated every hour I spent in an office drafting strategies, "talking points," and press guidance -- ephemeral performance art, at best -- the book spoke to me. (It also helped that I grew up in the SF Bay Area, like the author.)Admittedly, the book has a few problems. As other Amazon reviewers have noted, the author makes sweeping generalizations on the basis of his two brief jobs in the "knowledge" sector and his readings of Jackall and Braverman. The book also has an underbaked, incomplete feel to it, as if the author had trouble working his ideas into a full-blown argument. And here and there there's a hint of reverse snobbery, as when the author writes knowingly of race tracks and grimy machinery while never letting his audience (made up overwhelmingly of white-collar book readers) forget that he has a PhD from the University of Chicago. Perhaps this makes him the last Renaissance Man. (Perhaps he drinks Dos Equis, too.)However, the book is definitely on to something. It will stir up reflection and self-recognition in anyone who reads it seriously. I'm looking forward to the author's next work.
An ironic 2-star that could have been 5-stars. Crawford desperately needs a better editor and someone to buy him a beer and share the hard fact that his book is just more of what he spends 200 pages bitching about. Sad part, he can write. The tiny minority of those 200 pages is insightful, compelling and memorable. The rest is precisely what he did, and accurately derides, as an abstractor at Information Access Company - poorly summarize others’ work without adding value. I doubt those who gave awards or glowing reviews (New York Mag, “spine-tingling’) did more than skim and assume the mix of academic end notes and first person grease monkey narrative meant this was fresh and insightful. I hope Crawford goes back and finds the 26 good pages and takes another shot. He has something to say and the skill to say it.
I bought several of these. After reading it myself I've purchased a few copies for folks wrestling to understand why they feel a connection to performing manual labor while intellectual work sometimes leaves them feeling unfulfilled. We tend to like ourselves more when see that our work is tangible and meaningful, and we like ourselves less when the value of our work is ambiguous. Hopefully the book encourages readers to develop their own trade skills, value those skills in others and teach younger generations to do the same.This book deepened my appreciation for my dads decision to support my engineering education on the condition that I also develop myself as a tradesman.
So this book is exactly what it says it is. A book over how America has bashed and degraded the blue collar workmen. If you think hey this would be a great book for my father because he likes to work on cars or in the woodshed, then don't get this book. This is more of a philosophical take on the american work force. Now does it have humor and stories that make you laugh and relate, yes. But about halfway through the book I felt as if he was just repeating he point he made in the first 5 chapters.I'd buy it again and I know I'll read it again.
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