An Inquiry into the Value of Work - Shop Class as Soulcraft

As an avid motorcyclist (Harley-Davidson) and cubicle dweller (software engineer), I was intrigued by this book: it spoke in intelligent, cogent, and approachable terms to what I have observed in the workplace - and to what I have felt in my own soul searching. Through introspection, there was a realization (epiphany?) that I get a better sense of satisfaction changing my own oil or getting the FXDWG to start in the springtime than I realize installing a major piece of financial software.

While the author is obviously a man with an above-average(quite possibly off-the-charts)IQ, he remains approachable with his occasional wry sense of humor and his pertinent, personal anecdotes. The reader is left pondering what should have been obvious to him all along - there is recognizable and important personal value in working with one's hands. Success - economic and psychological - comes from recognizing that supplying a demand on one hand and exerting noble effort on the other leads to rewards. There is an overabundance of college graduates - armed with a four-year liberal arts degree - hoping to find white-collar office jobs that probably pay less than their freshman year's tuition. Maybe they should fill the demand for competent, honest carpenters, painters, and mechanics.

My formal education (catholic grade school and junior high school under the tutelage of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, catholic high school overseen by the Christian Brothers, catholic college - B.C. - directed by the Jesuits, and graduate school at a world-renowned research university - B.U.) steered me to the white-collar destiny that promised prestige and reward. While I have had economic success - an above average income and benefits package - there has been something lacking: an actual physical product that can be recognized and appreciated. A legacy is missing as I am invisible to those who use my "product" (i.e., the usable software). People are impressed to hear that I am a software engineer armed with a graduate degree - but, am I impressed with myself?

Popular culture depicts men who work in the blue-collar world as primates (I never got through more then 5 minutes of the television program "Tool Time" since the main character actually grunts) and their jobs as something you "end up" doing. Becoming a mechanic or plumber is something that was eschewed and left to those who did not have adequate SAT tutors - or so I thought. The author challenges this long-held notion with pertinent comparisons between white-collar and blue-collar work, the first often seen as cognitive; the latter as just physical and unskilled. As we push white-collar workers more towards unskilled, autonomous labor we realize that the white-collar workplace is no longer intellectually challenging at all. One project I am currently working on will dramatically decrease the number of times a data entry operator has to look left and right while processing a form - how zombie-like. And, these zombies are required to have college degrees.

Recently I began a course in furniture upholstery through a local adult education school. It was for fun but opened my eyes. There is as much cognitive and creative activity in this area then in any other I have tried. A tired piece from a thrift store can be brought back to life, appreciated, touched, admired... and resold. No high school or trade school offers this particular training anymore. There may be a chance for a lucrative business - not to mention the desire to get to work early and leave late that I have not had in a long, long time.

Great book! From the first page and found it very enlightening all the way through. He talks about growing up working as a mechanic and electrician. He outgrew all of that labor for hire when he accomplished a PHD. As he continued his career for a prominent Washington think tank he realized that every morning he was dawning a costume, both physically and psychologically. He new it didn't suit him. He looked around and saw that the ones he truly admired were those that had full autonomy over how they spent every hour of their day, that is independent tradesmen. He decided to open a motorcycle repair shop. He Boasts about his satisfaction in turning a wheel barrow full of disassembled parts into a precision rolling machine, putting green money in his pocket and hearing it throttle out the door. He speaks of the universal of dilemma how to charge for services not requested or maybe even required, but something that in his heart he knew just had to be done. Matthew makes a very sensible point about the quest for higher education. If you love books and have a thirst to learn, college (at 35k per year) is a great place to be. If you are looking for an impressive degree to get you a dream job, maybe you should rethink that strategy. He comments that at the rate advanced degrees are being handed out these days you may need a PHD to run a dog walking service. He encourages everyone, even people pursuing the academic route, to learn a tangible hand skill. One that cannot be outsourced overseas. "You can't hammer a nail over a wire." is a quote that comes to mind. I have passed that advise, and this book to my children and I hope is serves them well.

This book may not touch everyone as it did me, but for most anyone there is plenty to make you think.

It may seem antithetical that I, the headmaster of a classical, Christian school, should find such satisfaction in this book. My school is long on Latin and short [read as: ZERO] on shop.

I did not give do the book due justice. I read it in 5 days and felt like I was taking the 1,000 foot view of it. I added a star to give Crawford the benefit of the doubt because I don't have the time to get into it any further. I was taken though with his high view on the value of work. He writes compellingly about the deficiencies of modern education and the systematic problems associated with the factory mentality.

Being so foreign to engine knowledge, Crawford's detailed motorcycle repair illustrations did not put me off. They grabbed me, even though they were written in a language I don't understand.

This book though probably won't hit the mark on its intended audience. The shop teacher (who is intended to treat his class to soulcraft) will likely find the book too unapproachable and esoteric. Case in point, my dad is a master woodworker. He has retired after his long years of teaching printing and woodworking in the public schools. He has a Masters Degree in his trade, and he is currently endeavoring to build a trade school from the ground up. It seems like he would really get excited about this book, but he got it and put it right back down. It put him off.

I really feel that the spirit of the book is fantastic, but you have to keep up with a Ph.D. in philosophy to understand it. There is a lot of high philosophy smattered in and bubbling up. It's good, but a more approachable summary would be widely heralded and more easily embraced by the intended masses.

I'll let others dissect the content.

Boy was I surprised with this book. I, by chance, came across this book while perusing some digital downloads and the cover and title intrigued me. I couldn't put this book down. This is not a book about motorcycles (like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance isn't) although there are some references to the work. It is a book about people getting in touch with what is important in life. The author has a PhD yet decides to quit his job at a think tank to work at something meaningful. I can relate to this book probably more than any other that I have read - and I have read many books. I have got more satisfaction creating art than I did from 30 years in engineering. The author does not slam people who have degrees or work at intellectual pursuits but, instead, looks for the connection of creativity with the individual. It is an inspiring book: comical, philosophical, technical. This was a library book but I will need to purchase it because I am sure that I will be referencing it in the future. If you have tried to read Pirsig's book but you got bogged down by all the references to quality or philosophy - you will find this book a godsend. It does have many references to philosophers but the writing style is probably more easy to follow. This is not a slam to Pirsig's book because I love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Shop Class plucks at the strings of the common man (woman). I have worked both in a cubilce for years and have been a blue-collar worker so I can really relate to Crawfords plight. Very impressive book. You will not be disappointed.

Crawford's argument comes down to the idea that the only jobs secure from outsourcing are those that are always in demand and demand face to face contact between customer and deliverer. He also argues that it is these jobs that are inherently more satisfying, as they require the involvement of the whole person - mind and hand. Accountancy and architecture can be outsourced and sent offshore just as surely as manufacturing has been, but we will always need mechanics, plumbers, surgeons and hairdressers. Don't send your kids to college - teach them a trade.

But what of students at university? Crawford would say, "Learn a trade in your long breaks - and you'll earn enough to pay your fees." He would also say that too many of our young people are staying in education too long because we have swallowed the misconceptions of the "knowledge economy." Get a degree, get a white collar job, and earn decent money is the mantra. But, as Crawford demonstrates, much of that white collar work is unfulfilling and - in reality - menial. It is the tradesmen who genuinely gets to use his brain, and who controls his own destiny.

Which is not to say that Crawford is anti-education. Indeed, he has a degree in physics and a PhD in philosophy, and this is a philosophically written book. Crawford combines philosophical observations of work with `testimony' of his own experience, as philosophy student, a short spell as a `cubicle worker', director of a think tank, electrician and motorcycle mechanic. He is clearly an unusually talented and multifaceted man, and thus better qualified than most of us to plough his own furrow in life.

Crawford traces the way in which contemporary working practices have evolved and comes to the sobering conclusion that, "Corporations portray themselves as results-based and performance-oriented. But where there isn't anything material being produced, objective standards for job performance are hard to come by. What is a manager to do? He is encouraged to direct his attention to the states of minds of his workers, and become a sort of therapist." Crawford contrasts this with the life of a tradesmen, where the objectivity of spirit level or plumb line are their own irrefutable measure.

"Not surprisingly, it is the office rather than the job site that has seen the advent of speech codes, diversity workshops, and other forms of higher regulation. Some might attribute this to the greater mixing of the sexes in the office, but I believe a more basic reason is that when there is no concrete task that rules the job - an autonomous good that is visible to all - then there is no secure basis for social relations. Maintaining consensus and pre-empting conflict become the focus of management, and as a result everyone feels they have to walk on eggshells. Where no appeal to a carpenter's level is possible, sensitivity training becomes necessary."

I connected with this book in several ways. First, while in Junior High (remember when it was called that) in the 60s I was told by my guidance counselor I couldn't take Shop II because I was on a college prep track and Shop 2 was for those kids who would be blue collar workers. The bias of those comments stuck with me all these years. Second, there is an option pursued by myself and many of my close friends. While I was a white collar worker my entire professional career my hobby was restoring and maintaining cars. I needed the satisfaction of that work so took it on as a hobby and developed mechanical proficiency many mechanical skills including engine and gearbox rebuilding. After reading this book I realized many of my close friends have the same approach. A teacher who built his own house. A doctor who hand builds kayaks. A CPA who welds, restores and works on cars. Somehow we all value working with our hands and while we don't do it to pay the bills we all do it to satisfy our souls to great success. Crawford explains why we all feel this way. All of these friends have now read the book and enjoyed it. Crawford nailed it.

People don't do things with their hands anymore. That's the central lament of this book. We don't make things. Instead of fixing things, we throw them out. We don't even have the knowledge of how things work to fix them if we wanted to. The trades are devalued in schools, seen as lesser career paths compared to office jobs. As such, we have a culture divorced from the physical things around us.
But what Crawford argues, convincingly, I think, is that the job of physical laborers, of craftsman, have an inherent value to society and to the craftsman that cannot be found in an office. A craftsman draws on experience that goes beyond routinized labor, and in the end he is judged by the physical evidence of his work--does it work? There is value in doing things with our hands, in the act of creation, in the act of physical problem solving. In interacting with our physical world. Perhaps because of our hyper-digitized world, you see a rise in the craft arts, in home improvement, in gardening--in hobbies involving our hands.

Crawford recounts many of his own experiences as an electrician and a mechanic at a motorcycle shop. In prose that at often is rather poetic, he conveys the frustration, education, humility, pride and spirituality that all can come through an act of physical creation or solving a problem that involves physical and mental challenges.

Where Crawford strays into more dubious territory is when he begins to make generalized value judgments about office work. He compares the relationships of office managers to the relationships of mechanics in a shop, with the office managers using a kind of two-faced code compared to the mechanics' straight-talk. And he compares the definitive success or failure of a craftsman--he can see the results of his work at job's end--to the more nebulous results of an office worker--often a project is ongoing, success is more abstract and less defined, and as a part of a team it's often difficult to suss out one's personal contribution. While I would agree that a sense of accomplishment might be harder to come by in an office environment, Crawford makes too many generalizations based on his minimal office experience and, in the end, comes across as condescending.

That said, the broader premise of the book is important and well said.

Matthew Crawford is clearly an erudite, well educated man (judging by the breadth of literary references in this book). He also spends his working day in an oily workshop fixing motorbikes. Thus the crux of his argument is set up - that the relentless drive towards college education and white collar work are alienating a whole generation of graduates, as much as the industrial proleteriat of the 19th Century were divorced from meaningful satisfaction from their work during the Industrial Revolution.

Crawford draws on examples from his own life - working as a PhD in Classics with an office next to J.M. Coetzee at the University of Chicago, as a think tank guru, as a summariser of academic reports and, ultimately, as a bike mechanic. The last job, above all the others is the one that has truly fulfilled him. Why? Well Crawford explains this clearly. The job of fixing a bike properly requires as much intellectual effort and scholarship as any white collar job, in fact considerably more than most given the trend towards specialisation in the office and hampster wheel type occupations of 'managing people and expectations'. The mechanic has to master his mind far more flexibly and adaptably than the office grinder, who turns up at his cubicle each day to fulfil his cog-in-a-wheel job within an organisation. For the mechanic, each job is different, his knowledge (particular, rather than universal) is far more directly applicable to something useful in the world, and he gains independence and job satisfaction the white collar guy can only dream of.

Compelling stuff. Crawford's book should at least challenge received snobberies about blue collar work from white collar workers, and make people think carefully about what skills they use in their own life. As Dr Johnson wisely said - to be cack handed is as much a shortcoming as any intellectual impoverishment.

Upon reading Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work in one sitting, I feel like a flooded carburetor. I had to pick this book to review in three paragraphs? I had mistakenly assumed it was a self-help book. Owner of Shockoe Moto, a motorcycle repair shop just across the way in Richmond, Crawford -- in addition to being in close proximity and releasing this book this year -- might be an interesting chap, providing some pithy insights to how we value "meaningful work" I figured. My carburetor floodeth over.

If you're interested in societal progress, Shop Class is a must read. If you're involved in the local movement based on Richard Florida's "Creative Class" you won't like what this book has to say. Matt Crawford is Dilbert on intellectual steroids. He adeptly demonstrates the absurdism of white-collar work and the "perversities" and flawed thinking of managers and educators who believe knowledge-based capital is the solution to post-industrial society. "Real knowledge arises through confrontations with real things," Crawford says. Rather than preach his message, he illustrates his proofs by describing real life tasks, from writing abstracts for journals in his very own cubicle, to serving a position at an academic think tank, to rebuilding a motorcycle. Yes, he tells you each step.

Above all else, this book is a great observation. Despite the numerous references to philosophers, economists, contemporary H.R. and team-building policies (including a hefty 24 pages of notes), it's easy to listen to a guy who can smell the difference between a backfire caused by ignition from a backfire caused by a too-lean fuel mixture. A Tool-Time Philosopher who knows when to blow off a part with high-pressure air versus spraying WD-40 versus spraying athlete's foot powder (to make oil leaks more visible, if you didn't already know), Crawford's observations are like a well-oiled machine. The combination of shop talk ("old bikes don't flatter you, they educate you") and sage suggestions ("if you do go to college, learn a trade in the summer...you're likely to be less damaged") will probably make this book a classic. It's too bad the position of US Secretary of Labor isn't a "real job," requiring actual manual competency: Crawford would be perfect for it. Shop Class is brilliant (but not in an Einstein sort of way, M.C.--he knows what I mean).

--Tom Field

My copy of this book is now dogeared and tattered. I didn't write in it and I cannot tell you why. I guess I didn't want my words cluttering his. I know the book was a popular success spending some time on the New York Times Bestseller List. Typically I eschew anything on that list (It's a psychic echo of my Gen-X 1990's. I apologize for it regularly.). Not this time.

There are many reasons I've enjoyed this book. I'll be candid. That I am from Richmond, VA, lived in Chicago, IL, and presently reside in Berkeley, CA made reading this book a special experience. Crawford lives in Richmond, lived in Chicago and was raised in Berkeley. I knew every corner and streetscape. I knew where he wrote about. I knew those places and I guess that's the point. Knowing.

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford is a book (originally an essay) about work. Sure. "An inquiry into the value of work" says the subtitle. Yep. It is. It's more profoundly about how we know what we know and the ethics of the same. Ethics are Crawford's soulcraft. Who we are, how we come to know our world, and how we value such knowing is a measure of soulfulness (the ethics of metacognition, he calls it).

He critiques the American educational system as well as our incessant need to turn every kind of work into an assembly line. Whether it is Ford or Apple, innovation comes from craftwork but industry demands cogs and wheels and knowledgework turns human minds into cogs. No one needs to be a craftsperson any longer. We don't value it. One merely needs to know one's place in the assembly line. Our schools train us to value this "non-thinking." Our schools systems, the administrators and politicians who run them have eliminated shop class right along side art and music. We don't value these kinds of thinking. They are slow and cumbersome. And yet, to paraphrase Crawford, they are perhaps the deepest expressions of our souls.

So, here's another confession of sorts. This is the book I want to write about liturgy. This. This is it. Liturgy is a soulcraft. It's a way of thinking, of problem solving. Individual craftwork in the midst of a community of craftworkers taking as long as it takes to work their way through to the stated goal. It's slow and cumbersome. It takes time to learn and master. It takes time to practice. One reason we struggle with liturgy is because we have not been taught to value it. In fact, we have been taught to value it's opposite which in turn compells us to fashion liturgies that are more like concerts or spiritual assembly lines. Plug us in and crank us out. "Just add water." What kind of Baptismal ecclesiology is that? What are the ethics motivating how we think about liturgy? What are our actual values? Alacrity? Entertainment? Salvation? We need to ask ourselves these questions.

Crawford is more interested in problem solving than I might be, but I understand where he's coming from and it's not too strange to think of liturgy as a problem of sorts. It may not be troublesome, but there are pieces that go together and no matter how concretized our liturgy may be (See: a Catholic missal or the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer), our communities, their abilities, and the spaces in which they worship demand a certain improvisation, a certain problem solving and thinking.

I could write a book about the book and I guess that's the highest compliment I could pay.

Soulcraft. Yes. This.

First, some kudos. Author Matthew Crawford presents some illuminating ideas in sometimes-sparkling prose. For example, his opening section wonderfully evokes the thoughtfulness that's necessary to wrangle with something in the real world. You can't just wish it into form (using the abstract thinking that is so prized in our society); you actually have to deal with the object as it is. His description in Chapter 8 of his work experience abstracting scientific journals is hilarious. In that same chapter, he beautifully eviscerates the shoddy college education that most people receive.

For all of those sections, Crawford deserves credit. It's obvious that he's thought deeply, read extensively, and tested his ideas through many discussions.

On the other hand, the book stretches far beyond what's needed to make his point, thus resulting in a great deal of repetition. It also toggles awkwardly between the fancy prose to be expected of a PhD in political philosophy and very pedestrian writing that would earn a "B" grade in many high schools. It's almost as if he ran out of time to finish the book and left some sentences in draft form.

More importantly, some of his ideas are half-true, wrong, or even contradictory. Example, he vastly overstates the mind-numbing nature of life in many offices and derides the value of teamwork in a complex enterprise. Yes, it's true that members of a large organization, even one organized into teams, might feel that their contribution to a task is small. They can't do it all themselves, as Crawford might be able to do with a motorcycle repair job. But so what? There are complex jobs that have to be done by teams because one person isn't capable of mastering all the tasks. And there's no reason why one can't get joy and satisfaction from contributing to the solution.

For a contradiction, consider Crawford's paean to the lone-wolf gearhead who fixes obscure motorcycles. This is a man-to-man job, full of independence and challenge, and totally in opposition to the mass-market work of so many deadened souls. But how did those bikes and bike parts get manufactured in the first place? In factories, where machines dictated what men did! And who is paying for Crawford's motorcycle-whispering talents? People who have regular jobs and regular paychecks in the offices and factories he derides.

Another, final example of my bone of contention. Crawford glorifies the working man's environment as a place in which you earn your position. But his description sounds to me like a bunch of pretentious asses who don't even want to help you unless you debase yourself at their feet and pledge to learn everything there is to know about camshafts and cylinder heads. What if I just want my bike fixed? Why should I have to prove myself to these guys or have them sneer at me as a dilettante?

Anyway, it's an interesting book, and you can skim the middle of it after getting the basic idea in the first 30 pages.

In my opinion, this is a better sequel to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" than Robert Pirsig's own sequel, "Lila." I know Pirsig didn't intend for "Lila" to be a sequel, but I am using the term loosely, meaning the books are best read in a particular order.

Don't get me wrong. "Lila" is a good book, and is definitely worth the time to read, but compared to "Shop Class as Soul Craft," both of Pirsig's books seem out of date. Still, I think there is a lot to be gained by reading both of Pirsig's works before you read "Shop Class as Soul Craft."

Shop Class as Soulcraft questions the process by which many of us choose our future career or discipline, and how so many people end up in careers they find spiritually unrewarding. Although, on the surface, this book might appear to be an indictment of higher education, that is not the author's intent. It is an exploration of how our culture and values are changing, and how we can make our world better by valuing the lessons labor can teach us. Whenever I meet a professor who thinks students focus too much on grades, I as if he or she has ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Whenever I meet a student who appears to only be attending college because that is what is expected of her or him by others, I ask if he or she has ever read Shop Class as Soulcraft.

The author asserts the value of manual labor and craftsmanship. He outlines the more intrinsic value of manual labor against the value of being a knowledge worker. The book relies heavily on the author's own experiences to prove his point. The author is brilliant and makes some great points and insights. My major problem with the book is that the author generalizes against all knowledge worker jobs based upon some really crappy jobs he's had in the past. My job is a database administrator and I work in a cubicle. For the most part, I like my job. I tune databases, write data loads and help people solve problems. I don't feel my job is sucking the life out of my soul so I had a hard time identifying with the author's arguments. His views on corporate culture seem too simplistic to me. Also, some of his observations are just plain strange. For example, his defense of dirty jokes is a little stretched.

In summary, I strongly recommend the book. Some the observations of the value of work are profound. He insights on what is wrong with society are worth thinking about. He quotes Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Pirsig's book is far better. Pirsig has an overlying philosophical basis to his views. This book seemed to be a hodgepodge of philosophies to support his thesis. However, it is worth reading.

...the author's intellectual honesty is massively undermined by the fact that the 'think tank' he headed for five months, the George C. Marshall Institute, is funded by the oil industry to dispute a well-established body of scientific evidence on climate change. Mr. Crawford writes passionately about the 'know-how' of personal agency and experience, about the increasing distance between first-hand knowledge and modern corporate life. So it is ironic that he would have taken a job, however briefly, as a corporate shill charged with denying the knowledge that thousands of climate scientists have carefully built up over decades through personal experience, observation and experimentation. Mr. Crawford is rightfully proud of the expertise harvested from repairing motorcycles; how odd that he would have disparaged, on behalf of corporate masters, the same personal knowledge in climate experts.

I think this book did an excellent job of pointing out patterns of behavior in the corporate job world as well as in the academic world. I agree 100% with Crawford's assessment that colleges are purveyors of credentials, and it is those credentials which hold the greatest value to a student, far beyond the knowledge gained through education. So much of this book is enlightening, but I found a couple issues which I felt deserved criticism.

The first of these is the writing style. Who is the intended audience? This book glorifies blue collar work, but it is written with such vocabulary and density of ideas that most blue collar workers I know wouldn't make it past page one. And this is unfortunate because I think many of them could benefit from hearing such a well-detailed perspective.

The second issue is the simplified version of blue collar workers, and how they bond together in a harmonious brotherhood where the master gently guides the apprentice through example, instruction, and criticism. I have worked in shops and in the trades for much of my life, and I still do. First of all, not everyone in the trades takes pride in their work. That should be apparent to anyone. And secondly, people in the trades can be absolutely brutal to one another. There is a bonding which occurs when people work together, and they depend on each other to get their jobs done. But the harmony as described by Crawford is sort of new-agey and idealistic. Guys on the job gang up on one another all the time. Racial and political intolerance is common. I am certain that this is not true for all blue collar environments, but it is surely not rare.

Despite these two criticisms, I thought the book was good.

My father was a mechanic and I spent a great deal of time with him in the garage working on cars. I rode motorcycles so my father and I also put together old basket case bikes. When I got older I moved away from that life. I opened my own business as an art dealer for Dali.com -The Salvador Dali Society and spent nearly all of my time working in an office. When I hit my thirties I realized something was missing. In my forties I became more acclimated to the feeling of dissatisfaction and began to think I could simply live with it. About two years ago I bought a house in disrepair and began doing all the work myself, work my father had taught me as kid. I realized at the end of the day of laying tile I felt a rush of self satisfaction more so than I ever felt in my business life.

Somewhere around this time, I picked up "Shop Class as Soul Craft." This book put it all into perspective. We men are missing something, and sometimes we go along for too many years before we figure out what it is. Just like when we were boys, we need to get dirty, we need to build things, finish things and see the result of the work we do with our hands. Whether it be kick starting a motorcycle that has been dead for years, cranking up an old Firebird or admiring the new bathroom we built with our own hands.

I have a teenage son, who will never have an auto mechanics or wood shop class. Somewhere along the way the schools figured that we needed to raise our boys to work in a cubicle and the trades were no longer necessary. I do what I can with my boy, we paint, we lay tile, we dig holes for the sprinkler system because I think it is important that he learn the value of physical and hard work. At first he trudges through, then he gets into the zone. You could see that he cares about the job, he back butters the tiles thinly and perfectly and he wipes up the runs from his paint brush. He is becoming a man. I intend to give my son as many skills as I can, just like my father did for me.

While I push him in grades and sports, there is going to be a day when he needs to fix something in his house, or when his wife says she wants a new kitchen. He will be able to take on that challenge and have an everlasting symbol of his skill and hard work. More importantly I hope he can choose a career that is creative and physical enough to give him a high everyday. If you have a son, read this book. Maybe you can find a craft together that will give him the fullest life he can have.

There might not have been an entire book's worth of material in this subject, but it was well written and engaging. My gripes with the work are minimal, but worth mentioning: First, the unfortunate phrasing by the author from time-to-time suggesting his own internalization of the elitist judgment of labor on which the work ostensibly seeks to disprove. Second, that as a topic book of social forces, Crawford's best arguments derive from first principles--appealing to forces every reader has felt and therefore accepts on some level as intuitively true. The arguments are (I think) weakened when he transitions to evidence from social sciences and other such non-practical work that is generally passed as less valuable. There's not enough of it to present an empirical case, so what there is of empiricism gives the appearance of cherry-picking. Third, for me the narrative was not enhanced by his re-hashing of the spiritual aspects of mechanical maintenance from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. These points were good from Crawford, and just as true, but are more poignant in their original context than as used here to give a narrative cohesion to this topic. Finally, Crawford seems very much on his game regarding social forces, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt that either A: His literary agent, B: his editor, or C: the publishing house are responsible for the framing context of the title and the cover art which seem shamelessly to seek to ride the coattails as the ideological progeny of Zen and the Art. . . though possibly better suited to a long article than a book, the intellectual impact of Crawford's thesis needed no assistance by aligning itself with another idea with established mass market appeal. That the content of this book is wrapped in emotion-evoking imagery and framed with covert association to works with which it has no natural connection seems ridiculously ironic.

It kind of reminded me of the feeling I had walking into Costco one morning and seeing the part of the Pixar movie "Wall-E" that condemns Western Consumerism playing in sync on a hundred jumbo plasma-screen TVs.

With all that said, I found the read very enjoyable, enriching, and it gave me a new perspective to examine my life, my behavior, and my world--and that is the sign of excellent writing.

A final thought: this strikes me as the kind of book targeted at people like me: overeducated, academic, soft-handed professional types who live most of our lives up in the stratosphere of our higher cognitive functioning. Though I am that guy, most of my social circle are employed in skilled trades and labor.

I can imagine (accurately or not) that my more rugged buddies would find this book a complete waste of time. I can imagine recommending it to them and their being shocked that somebody actually spent time to write down something so freakin' obvious, and they'd ask me, "Dude, are you telling me you didn't already know this? You're such a pussy. How can someone even survive who doesn't already know this?"

But I'm the former kind, so I thought it was great.

A profound celebration of work - Of pursuing your passion. Crawford asks the hard questions: How do I value work? How do I value the worker? What are my judgments on the men and women who choose a blue collar path? Why are certain trade workers devalued over others? Matthew Crawford traces back to the shift that happened in America, where shop classes were full of eager young men and women wanting to learn how things were taken apart and put back together were replaced with computer labs. Insightful.

Crawford touches on a number of deeply interesting topics. If you've given them any thought before then this book will be an instant favorite. If you've never given any of these topics any deeper thought, you'll think the book is pointless and repetitive. It's not a meandering philosophy book like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycling Maintenance" but if you liked that book, you'll love this one too. It is not a light-minded biker trope either so if OC Choppers is what you're looking for, this isn't it.

Essentially the book is about how dependent the modern consumer society is without being preachy or self-righteous. The details of this dependency are how disconnected we are from the products we use, how the concentration of power causes this disconnectedness regardless of whether that power is concentrated in government or corporations, and the role of a college education in training us to be dependent and easily led.

He contrasts how early motorcycles required extensive hands on operation such as manual oiling, kick starts, and the like whereas a modern Mercedes doesn't even have a dipstick. Our alienation from the products we use every day and the sense that we don't completely own our "own stuff" anymore since we are dependent on the dealership to diagnose the onboard computer. This, as opposed to being able to open the hood, and readily see the engine and its various components just a few years ago.

All of this and he manages to not get overtly political or to bore us with possible policy changes to "correct" the wrongs he cites. But he does deal with some larger ideas that most people are ignorant of so it is probably a better book for an engineer or maybe the shop owner than the guy who's interest in the world doesn't extend beyond the fender wells.

As everyone is pushed towards college and working with your hands as seen as lesser than, Shop Class as Soulcraft is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Armed with a doctorate from the University of Chicago in philosophy, Matthew Crawford describes how he ended up working for himself repairing classic motorcycles. Well written and footnoted, his exploration of work in our society and his own ennui with the corporate culture was thought provoking and well worth the read.

My hope is that this book prompts more discussion into the value of craftsmanship and measurable work, and less prejudice towards those who choose NOT to buy into societies expectation that everyone earn a bachelor's degree, which is shifting towards everyone doing postgraduate work. As we consider for ourselves and our children our particular bents, what we excel at and enjoy, I hope that more people are able to take pride in an honest day's work with their hands, and the more than ample paycheck they can command for their skill.

At turns inspiring and horrifying. Crawford completely deflates the smug perception of "knowledge work" as cognitively superior to skilled manual work. More surprisingly, he avoids projecting manual work as morally superior in the process.

I came away with a deeper understanding of the joy I find working on my old motorcycle (yes, the bike on the cover was what first got my attention) as well as validation of my opinion that some of the smartest people I've ever had the privilege to work with have been tradesmen.

Most important, Crawford convinced me that the blind unilateral pursuit of a place in some mythical future "knowledge economy" (e.g. success requires a college degree) may leave future generations searching for ever-more-scarce and replaceable jobs, while leaving no one to fix a broken clothes dryer or install, say, telecom infrastructure equipment.

Although the core idea of this book has been addressed in whole or in part in a multitude of other works, Mr. Crawford does a singularly excellent job of tying together all the facets involved in the question of a "knowledge-based" economy vs. a skill or trade based economy. The writing carried a very friendly tone and made good use of the author's broad vocabulary without it being obnoxious or distracting.

I hope that educators, counselors, parents and others in key positions to influence children's choices and educational policy will read this and take it to heart. There's much to be said for recognizing upfront that many of us are better off learning a skill or trade we enjoy than automatically plowing ourselves into debt for a college education that may leave us unfulfilled and floundering.

The writing was surprisingly sophisticated, with allusions to high-brow thinkers like Heidegger and Aristotle, and these references weren't gratuitous as you'd expect but very appropriate. There were passages that stunned me with their truth and relevance. However, I felt that other parts of the book didn't cohere as well. Also, the diction ranged from subtle and intelligent to clumsily obscure. I think if you took the best parts of this book and made a long article out of it, maybe of about 100 pages or so, it would have been an absolutely brilliant piece of work. Some of the best parts were his analyses of modern business practices and theories. The more autobiographical parts about the art of motorcycle maintenance didn't interest me as much. But overall, highly recommended

As a fellow blue collar worker it was refreshing to read a book about the appreciation of actual labor. Too much is written about how blue collar workers have no value anymore, when in fact it is us who keep this world running.
The 3 star rating was because I thought the book was a bit lengthy for the subject matter, just my opinion.
The subject matter though was very thoughtful.

My husband has a desk job, but loves riding his motorcycle every chance he gets. The cover of this book is what immediately drew him to it--I'm certain of that. That said, I read one of the negative review for this book and was really surprised by it. As my husband was reading this book, he would periodically read pages out loud to me--I had no problem understanding them. Yes, this author is a smart guy and he is a bit academic at times, but I think the book is very well written. This book does challenge the reader to think and is not going to spoon feed the reader.

But, I want to address the complaints of two negative reviews I read...my husband and I do tend to read very different books. He enjoyed how Shop Class as Soul Craft was written and enjoyed chewing on the ideas in each chapter. We all have different inclinations about the kind of writers we enjoy reading. One of the reviewers criticized this book for being too academic. I think that if you do enjoy books that challenge you to think and think about how we view the culture we live in (and specifically the occupations we have) then you'll enjoy this book immensely. If you just want an easy read, then I recommend The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book. It's on the other end of the spectrum. Honestly, I am not putting down the Chuck Norris book at all. My husband and I both enjoyed that book a lot as well and had a lot of fun laughs. But, they're different kinds of books. Shop Class is like a PBS special and the Chuck Norris book is like a Sunday Night Movie.

Matthew Crawford's new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft is a philosophical treatise calling for manual competence: the mastery of one's own stuff that can lead to happiness and fulfillment. Some frustrated cubicle workers will find hope on these pages, and those who work successfully with their hands may feel affirmation and recognition. We depend on one another in our connected world, and understanding the value of all kinds of work can be helpful as we exchange skills and talents with others. At its core, this book is a work of philosophy, and can be a bit plodding at times to make a point. In anyone's search for the good life, reading Shop Class as Soulcraft can be a useful way of thinking about what leads to satisfaction and joy. For some of us, it can be as simple as taking something apart and putting it back together.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

Let me start by saying that I thought this was the best book I've read in a long time. The author's thesis is terrific and salutary in a time of local food movements, evil bankers, and fix it-don't-trash-it, post-crash anti-consumerism. Even better, for me at least, it is written in very, very elegant, well-crafted language that is a joy to read. As in a good Sir Walter Scott novel, most sentences in this book feel like they were forged not written. A bit of context about your reviewer, however; I will admit to having a stack of advanced degrees myself and to having ploughed through a couple of shelves full of philosophy and social science theory in my time so I'm not put off by the author's rigorous use of words and a vocabulary that many would describe as Jurassic-era (big and superannuated) that understandably alienated other reviewers. Unlike other reviewers, I didn't find the author to have unjustifiably protracted the argument, although I recognized an alternation between pretty readable narration and vintage academic argumentation that would leave uninitiated/unprepared feeling like half the book could have been cut out without diminishment. For me, I would have been disappointed had the book stayed a shallow story about tricky bike diagnoses successfully made because the author was smart or been a book of wise life-lessons you can learn from fixing motorcycles. There are a ton of those already (as the author points out in his introduction). This is really a very readable philosophy tract. As such it is rare and valuable and might contribute to new social and economic thinking. If you want more like it, try reading some E.O. Wilson. But it is not something you can expect anyone to get into just because they like tinkering in the garage.

September 25, 2009
Returning to manual labor can inspire our kids
Donald A. Collins, free lance writer

My daughter in law, a skilled crafts person just sent me a copy of "Shop Class As Soul Craft", by Matthew Crawford (Penquin 5/09), a book which brought back so many memories.

It seems to many of my age that much of our current generation has not a clue about doing anything manual! Hanging out in malls, thinking all food comes from Safeway and having no clue about the nature and responsibilities of self governance.

When I was in junior high school of my little home city in Pennsylvania in the 1940's, we had regular "shop" classes, where a very able teacher named Mr. Agnew-no relation to Spiro as far as I know-gave weekly sessions to us boys, where we learned the basics of doing creative arts like metal foundry molding, electrical circuitry, woodworking, and tin smithing.
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The girls in my class went to "home economics" to prepare for their upcoming roles and wives and mothers. Watching my "non-working" mother, in those days, since my father had a steady office job, I never thought to wonder, as she toiled endlessly-not tirelessly-to manage our household and her unruly children, how she could be by our society's then male dominated masters described as "non working".

Of course, my father, raised in another small rural Pennsylvania town, had an understanding of the joys and hardships of country life in his bones and was given manual skills in his everyday life. He kept buying acreage and spent his weekends tending a variety of gardens raising fruits and vegetables of all kinds, while often working evenings in a basement shop and later in a specially constructed out building near our house, where he crafted an array of tables, luggage racks and other useful household items.

My daughter in law, an expert cabinet maker, macrame weaver, and stained glass window producer, fully understand the intricacies of being a craft person as her "real job" is as a working commercial fisherman in San Francisco, with a wood working shop in her basement.

As robotics continue to take over more and more of the manufacturing process, the author, Matthew Crawford's point that "the manual trades are very different from the assembly line and from dumbed down white collar work as well" becomes a vital observation and mind opener.

One can take encouragement from the author's assessment that there is growing recognition among us that manual work sends a "call for self reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world."

We can't all be "knowledge workers" or even if we do that sort of work for a living, we can still, like my father did, gain self renewal through the power of the manual crafts.

This is a book that can be digested from so many different perspectives that it's hard to write a straighforward review about it. Crawford holds a PhD in philiosophy and is a former - albeit only 6-months - executive director of a think tank. He is currently on the staff of another non-profit group and he is also the proprietor of a small motorcycle repair shop. His main point is that work done using the hands, as compared to information work, is highly rewarding because it directly connects the worker with his end product, and there is nothing vague or ambiguous about whether the tradesperson was succesful or not - the lights either come back on or not, the leak either stops or doesn't. In addition, manual work is not given enough credit for its intellectual aspect, for the various theories and tests of those theories that tradespeople need to apply when solving a repair problem, for example. This engagement with the machine or part also humbles the tradesperson as he often deals with failure, and must sometimes appeal to a mentor or old-timer. Crawford appeals to philosophers like Aristotle and Heidegger in support of his theory.

Crawford is particularly poignant when criticizing the office world where the divorce of work from work product is most acute. Some of his observations, particularly of team leading exercises, are laugh-out-loud funny. His take on the causes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis is unique, ascribing it to the elimination of judgment from the decision to provide a mortgage to a borrower, as the numbers are simply crunched and the loan is bought and re-sold until it is lost somewhere in the cyberworld of finance. He juxtaposes this against J. P. Morgan's (the person, not the bank's) testimony in Congress that character, based on the judgment of the local banker, was the basis for credit.

Crawford makes a lot of good points to support his theory but shys away from making any policy prescriptions, other than suggesting that college students take trades classes in the summer to experience the value of connecting to measurable work. I think this is were his argument starts to look like nostalgia and romanticism. if the world is inexorably moving toward an information economy, where the vast majority of jobs will continue to be created, and if appliances, cars and the like will continue to be computer driven and diagnosed, is there really room for all those future college graduates to flood the trades market? I do think there is a real threat to Americans in the information economy where jobs can be routinized and do not have to be done in person - like radiologists and accountants, for example. But what should the response to this be? Lowering of wages here to remain competitive? Identification of other sectors where Americans can have a competitive advantage?

There are a lot of other interesting observations and reflections as well, like Crawdord's contrast of working in a trades crew as opposed to an office team, as well as reflections on the role of education in preparing students for a world of products divorced from work.

On a personal note, although Crawford's description of manual work motivates me to fix the clog under the sink on my own (I've checked out the Youtube video on how to use the snake), I don't want to handle the electrical problems myself - let someone else get the shocks. Also, when one of my sons told an electrician working in our home that he wanted to be like him when he grew up, this electrician, a smart guy, immediately told him not to do it - it's hard and it's dirty and you come home bone tired. So, perhaps the notion of taking up a trade can be considered by someone like Crawford, who has a PhD and other experience to fall back on, and has the intellect and education to step back and glamorize it and edify it, but in the real world mostly those with limited education and marketable skills, and therefore fewer choices, will end up there. And frankly, I think most people are happy to pay the person who looks under the hood or in the washing machine's innards or at the plumbing in the walls, and gets the car running, the washer washing and the sink water flowing, so that they can get back to what they do best or prefer to do, be that couch potato, musuem goer or whatever.

with more and more reports of useless college degrees this book, now ten years old, points out the folly of higher education for those better suited to trades and manual arts. It also shows how very undervalued is the intelligence of all those who fix out stuff.

Talk about using $50 words to get across a $.25 point! Matthew Crawford talks over everyone's head in this book. It is a shame because I could really see a good use for this. A great idea greatly over exaggerated!

Where's that sixth star when you need it? "Shop Class as Soulcraft" is thrilling, not like a Tom Clancy novel is thrilling, but thrilling to see someone as articulate as Crawford explode the myth that what America needs is millions more "knowledge workers" creating PowerPoint presentations about abstract concepts and taking out their frustrations with their meaningless jobs in fight clubs and triathalons.
Every page of this book is a polished gem of insightful thinking and writing about the importance of real work, tangible work, done well, and the spirtual as well as material comforts that can result. In a relatively short volume, Crawford manages to touch on meaning, excellence, community, human flourishing, knowledge, education and engagement--and more! Highest, highest recommendation! Six stars!

I was so tired of reading journalistic clap trap that passes for entertainment on this topic, and has no solid references or clear argument. This book was not only refreshing, but absolutely one of the best written works I have read in a long time. There are plenty of books on contemporary art and craft that rely on worn out cliches, the thin opinions of self interested collectors/gallery owners/dealers/art historians, and half hearted attempts at aesthetics. This is not one of those books. It makes a very elegant case for why in the post modern morass of fragmentation, emperors-new-clothes value system of art and commerce, and cultural dismissiveness of hand work there may be a truly revolutionary, hopeful, useful, and good movement happening. Worth reading if you really want to understand ideas about craft.

In his youth Matthew Crawford repaired motorcycles before he decided to get a real job and become a "knowledge worker." Armed with half a master's degree and high regard for himself Mr. Crawford wrote abstracts of magazine articles, and he found the work dull and meaningless. He didn't understand what these highly specialized science journals were writing, but his job performance wasn't measured by his ability to distill the author's words for easy useful consumption by interested readers -- rather he was just expected to pump out two dozen summaries a day. Mr. Crawford returned to the University of Chicago to obtain a doctorate a philosophy, and upon graduation became a highly-paid head of a Washington think tank. Nothing was required of him except to sell his soul: the findings of his think tank must coincide with the interests of the oil industry that was lavishly funding the think tank. After five months Mr. Crawford quit to start his own motorcycle repair shop.

"Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work" is a justification for his decision to abandon bureaucracies of all forms -- whether it be the corporation, academia, or all of Washington -- for something real, personal, and manageable. It is in the best sense of the word a polemic. Those who don't agree with Mr. Crawford will be dismayed by his utter lack of logical arguments but those who already feel and believe the same things as Mr. Crawford -- which is to say most of the thinking and reading population -- will find the book compelling, witty, and eloquent.

There is a major logical fallacy in this highly enjoyable book. Argument A: Corporations, bureaucracies, and school systems are so large and impersonal, abstract and meaningless that they force each of us to inhabit a world completely divorced from reality, and without reality as an anchor we are subservient to the whims and irrational logic of authority. Argument B: Repairing motorcycles is really good for you.

Let's put this another way. Mr. Crawford thinks working as a motorcycle repairman has many important benefits. It permits you to create your own universe, and to be master of that universe: each motorcycle problem has its own distinctive nature, and it is your experience and your instincts that will guide you to the solution. Repairing motorcycles connects you to yourself, to reality, and to others: you learn to use your body to navigate and control the intricacies of an inanimate object for the enjoyment and pleasure of your customers. Your self-worth is based on something real and concrete: instead of solely relying on the words of authority you have an objective standard to judge your performance, and no one can take that away from you.

This is all true, and excellent analysis. But the benefits accrued from working as a motorcycle repairman would be no different from working as a waiter, chef, forest ranger, journalist, and so on. Of course these benefits are ultimately contingent upon an entrepreneurial aspect of each endeavor: to work either individually or as a coherent team, rather than for a large lifeless bureaucracy.

It is a hostile and violent reaction to the stupidity, incompetence, and meaningless of bureaucracies that drives Mr. Crawford's writing, and what should also drive you to read this book.

Shop Class As Soulcraft is a book that should be read by just about everyone and certainly anyone approaching the time of entering the workplace, those who recently have and those who did some time ago and are not happy in their jobs.

Unfortunately, Crawford chose a writing style and vocabulary more suited to his cronies from the think tank he used to inhabit than to those who would most benefit from his in-depth analysis of the nature of Work and how what we do affects us in all aspects of our lives and being.

He presents an astonishingly complex view of the nature of work, its relationship to our intellectual and moral development, the value of doing work with tangible results for which we both can and must take responsibility and how all this affects both our own sense of self and the larger community we inhabit.

My sincere hope is that he somehow he gets this message and writes a book like this for the rest of us. I have a decent vocabulary and am not dumb but I had my electronic Webster by my side through the whole reading and used it often. I doubt many will do that. By contrast Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was as least as erudite and a breeze to read.

That said, I still highly recommend the book - he makes extremely important points I see no one else making and they could very well make the difference between someone going the usual route and hating his life, or taking a different fork and loving it.

Shop Class as Soulcraft, An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford, 2009

The author's values and priorities are different than mine in many respects. An excellent example of this is that the author cites John Muir as the "folk hero" author of a manual on Volkswagen maintenance, whereas I know the name as the folk hero founder of the Sierra Club. The two Muirs highlight our contrasting world views on topics like hot-rodding, motorcycles, and cigarettes.

Yet, I do appreciate Crawford's worldview on the value of work, especially in the homogenized world with its methods and rote rules. He is certainly right that the value of so-called blue-collar work is greatly undervalued as compared to educated white-collar roles. We often suffer in two ways when fixing cars, houses, and appliances seems to be a lost art. As workers, we are under-appreciated. As consumers we are left with too-few choices. His focus on the intrinsic value of a manual job well done (or even screwed up) is something that does not match the purely intellectual work. In my own work as an engineer, I have learned the need to build and test a design before putting it out in the world.

I can see this book as a good choice for a book club as it would certainly provoke interesting conversation.

I bought this book because I had loved Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I was hoping that the author of this book would offer something equally interesting and at first blush, I thought Crawford was on to something. Like other reviewers, I found his writing to be overly convoluted and difficult to follow in many places. The book seems geared more to his former philosophy colleagues than to his mechanic friends. Maybe he feels the need to justify turning his back on his academic training in political philosophy.

After wading through the book, I went back to collect a few underlines that I had made in the first pass. The more I revisited his assertions, the more it seemed to me that he was vastly over-generalizing his arguments. His citations from other authors were used mostly to support his argument that the workers are being exploited by not just the big bad corporations but also by big bad government. While there are problems aplenty in every work environment, the issues are not quite as simple as the systematic sucking out of people's brains so that automation systems can dumb down the work force. Crawford seems to long for a time when craftsmen were the rule rather than the exception. The only problem with that vision is that for the most part, it was never true. Most people scrabbled for a living on farms, even well into the 19th Century and the full-scale implementation of the Industrial Revolution. Most people's standard of living improved with mass production, responsible credit lending, and higher education.

If Mr. Crawford had stuck to his thesis that working with his hands was the right thing for him to do - and it might be the right thing for many others - it would have been a better book. His anecdotes on diagnosing problems with old motorcycles were interesting. If he could have written more from his experience rather than making a diatribe against the modern economy, he would have produced a better book.

Having said all this, Mr. Crawford's book did give me some things to think about, including the satisfaction of working directly with the things in our lives. I don't usually take the time to write a book review and the fact that I am writing even this suggests that his book did cause me to reflect on some of his ideas. But it could have been a much better book.

This book is worth a read. The author points to significant flaws of a world where prepackaged experiences, instant gratification have become the norm. The pleasure that we get from these is not truly fulfilling. It does not match the sense of accomplishment that one can attain through "useful" (i.e. of value to you or to others) "labor" (i.e. somewhat "painful" work).

The book also offers hope: through manual work, we can achieve a sense of purpose. And this manual work is actually in demand, so making it one's job is a sure path to financial autonomy.
That is, if one can own business, or work in a small business. The key here is to do this at a small scale, so one owns all the steps of a trade-able product/service, from start to finish.

Now the author's "so what", namely that one can simply not achieve a sense of purpose otherwise, is a stretch too far. I am a living example of the contrary. Further, his criticism of Richard Florida's "creative class" misses the point. Both the author and Mr Florida are talking about the same thing (creating something unique is the surest way to having a sense of purpose at work). Since contexts differ (intellectual vs. manual work) the recipes for success differ (albeit only slightly).

Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in years. His examination of the value and nature of work is penetrating and provocative and covers much more than the "white collar vs. blue collar" dichotomy that some have suggested. By his own words, his book examines "the nature of rationality, the conditions for individual agency, the moral aspect of perception, and the elusive ideal of community." One need not have an interest in motorcycles or in their repair to see parallels in their own life experiences and to more clearly see the connections between their work and their feelings of worth. Highly recommended.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I understand what the author is driving at with regards to tacit knowledge, the way we really learn and understand things, the inadequacy of 3-ring-binder interchangeable approaches to doing certain jobs.

But I don't think he has a good appreciation for the real economics behind why mechanized work really dominated the economy. He is talking in one chapter about alienated workers on an assembly line producing cars that will be "ripped away by the capitalist class" never to be seen by the same class of people that built them. If anything, the exact opposite is the case!

The advent of the assembly line and mechanized labor produced some of the first cars that were made efficiently enough to be affordable by the laborers. On the other hand - hand-tooled vehicles, a modern example would be Porsches, can never be more than the playthings of the wealthy - no one else has the time to indulge such hobbies, or the ability to pay for that much skilled human attention.

Efficiency may end up producing mindless jobs that are crushingly dull, but it is also an extremely important economic good, in that it brings the price of objects once requiring thousands of skilled man-hours to produce into the reach of the middle class. We don't have flying cars because gen-av aircraft never developed beyond the low rate/skilled production stage. We do have personal computers, because their production, once done by PhDs hand-wire-wrapping each board, is now done automatically by robots.

A very mixed bag. There are some thought-provoking insights here. But the author's writing style is
torturously turgid (kind of like that phrase!). And his idealization of blue-collar repair and construction
work seems quite disconnected from the reality of that kind of labor. The contents of this book are
better suited to a tightly constructed magazine article.

This book REALLY spoke to me, particularly what he calls the "degradation of work" and the disconnect between what corporations say and how they actually treat their employees. His critiques of modern work values are scathing and priceless.

This book is incredibly on target with our "modern" dilemma of technological advancement and being held hostage by it. The author's thesis that there is real truth and honesty in working with and understanding the physical world is well articulated and supported. The contradiction that we do not value (in terms of compensation and social acceptance) the people that actually make our ever-increasing mountain of "stuff" work is exposed with clarity and thorough and convincing research. Crawford is a true American philosopher. Having said that, the best, and most engaging parts of the book are the anecdotes and real life experiences that he has witnessed. The stories. There are many sections where his preoccupation with being intellectual gets in the way of a clear presentation of his points. Perhaps Crawford felt that to add credibility to a work that defends and champions what many consider working class or blue collar values and talents, the book had to have resounding intellectual depth to be convincing. Not true. The thesis is pointed, credible and well researched. We know you're smart Matt even though you are "just a motorcylce mechanic." Bring it down a notch so a non-academic can enjoy it too.

The book is a well-thought-out treatise and investigation into the value and ultimate worth of manual labor - the trades and the crafts, as placed in opposition to, and yet paralleled with, the life of the knowledge worker. I really do agree with Crawford's assessment of the status of the American workforce and the ever-increasing trend of corporate American management towards stripping the workers of all free-thought and coercing us (cunningly, slyly, under the guise of taking medicine that will cure our ills) into becoming numb monkeys who bang on typewriters all day long. I liked this book because this is a remarkable examination of work in its many troubled contemporary forms, an indispensable read for anyone who has his or her eyes open today and knows the challenges of searching for a job that provides a sense that it is unquestionably worth doing.

This is a great read on the philosophy of work, comparing the intrinsic value that comes with manual labor against the ephemeral gains from office work. Crawford, with a PhD from the University of Chicago and spent time running a DC based think tank, also worked several years as a plumber and mechanic. He has experience in both types of work he writes about and makes a convincing case that in the spiritual/physical sense manual labor is the more rewarding.

A quick read, this book is valuable for its many insights and the way the author forces the reader to think. I highly recommend this book.

This book is a little gem and it could not have come at a better time. After several decades of prosperity, the country is in a nasty recession. Along with the realization that business cycles have not been revoked, should come a parallel acknowledgement of the indispensability of competence. Society had started to believe otherwise. Mr. Crawford reminds us that the further removed we get from the world of things, the flimsier our knowledge. In his words, "real knowledge arises through confrontation with real things." A generation or so ago, when many young people worked their way through college at a range of summer jobs requiring manual skills, this problem of working lives lived in abstraction was not the epidemic is is today. Currently, alas, Mr. Crawford is right: Much of the country is being run by people who can barely change a light bulb, let alone build a deck or fix their toilets. Even worse, this is not perceived as a problem because so many have been told they are gifted, are phobic about failure, and see manual work as demeaning. Long periods of prosperity breed such attitudes and the narcissism that goes along with them, including that of parents who want trophy children. But times are changing and they favor Mr. Crawford's outlook. By 2030, or sooner, the world will look very different. Self-reliance, an ability to work with things, and, above all, "attentiveness to something other than oneself," will by then have come back in vogue.

Mr. Crawford also makes perceptive observations about the pervasive trend toward teams in the workplace. They are prone to dysfunctional group dynamics and manipulation. Intuitive judgment, as opposed to "rule following," gets a long overdue thumbs up. "When things get really hairy," Mr. Crawford writes, "you want an experienced human being in control."

If the book has a shortcoming, it is the author's tendency toward academic language. Mr. Crawford is a mechanic and an intellectual. It is often the latter who is speaking to us. "Agency," for example, will be understood by some readers, but will not be entirely clear and persuasive to others. Indeed, the target audience of the book is hard to discern. But these are very small quibbles and should not deter anyone from reading this superb piece of analysis.

Jim Sanders
Burke, Virginia

as someone who came from a working class family, entered the working class as a jet mechanic and later moved into the middle class as a college faculty member and administrator, i truly appreciated the context and content of this book. no-nonsense, non-sentimental approach on the history of work in this nation and how we've lost something of our independence by buying into the more is better attitude of citizen as consumer. made me think about my own past and appreciate my dad and the work i use to to with my hands (also got me motivated to finish some home improvement projects i've been putting off!). writing at times did veer into academic philosophical cloud (hey, the guy was a philosophy major!), but majority of the book was a good read. he's got a good formula for making sure you're in the kind of work field that will resist global market desire to export your well paying job - in itself worth the price of the book!

If you like spending time in the company of people who can think, try this one out. Crawford has not just a degree in physics, but a Ph.D. in philosophy. More importantly though, as he'll tell you, he fixes motorcycles for a living. This book is a meditation on intelligence, work, and morality that, while it owes a debt to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is actually deeper. One of the more interesting observations that Crawford makes is that intelligence should have a moral component, i.e. you should have the ability to take a step back and ask "is there something wrong with how I'm thinking about this problem?" This type of "metathinking" requires humility but it's also a mark of true genius -- sometimes it's useful to say "is there something wrong with how others are thinking about a problem?" Essentially, that's what Crawford is doing here about our society. We could use more of it. In any event, there is a lot of good stuff like this in the book.

I thought this was an interesting book that mixes philosophy, cognitive psychology, management theory, and the author's own experience as the owner of a motorcycle repair shop with a Ph.D. in political philosophy.

There were some good points, such as the connections made between the conversion of blue-collar expertise into assembly line rules and systems in the automotive age, to the conversion of white-collar expertise into the "knowledge management" of today; both leading to dissatisfaction and a management perception of an interchangeable workforce. Also liked the idea of some occupations such as motorcycle repair and medicine requiring a mindfulness, a dropping of ego and preconceptions in order to truly see problems; the benefit of something difficult and outside yourself in this age of user-centered experience.

But the book is less convincing when it talks uncritically about a blue-collar environment that is presented as a freer, more satisfying workplace where excellence rises to the top. He describes apprenticeships where newcomers are afforded a lower status, until they can prove themselves, and then rise in status over time. Actually, I think it can be a Darwinistic environment where the bullies sometimes win.

The author mentions a trip to India when he was unable to recognize the humanity of the people until he saw an aspect of himself in them; some electricians setting up wire (he has experience as an electrician). He attacks the self-absorption brought on by mass-produced consumerism, but he also seems to suffer from a certain inability to go outside of his own skin. My impression is that the author's notion of a freer blue-collar workplace (where you can tell dirty jokes and the "order of things is not quite so fragile") is less about individualism than an escape from the complications of our modern and increasingly diverse society.

My formal education is in poetry, so when I heard the Crawford interview on NPR while riding my motorcycle on a solo seven-day ride, I immediately exited to find the nearest book seller.

The brilliance of the book's premise is best revealed when Crawford manages to balance clarity and resonance by using the story of a solitary worker to open an inquiry fit for all mankind. From introduction to conclusion, those moments of balance between prosaic and profound abundantly reveal themselves to make Crawford's case.
Unfortunately, the clarity of those moments also shines a spotlight on the book's bits of clutter, detours, and passages that sound unnecessarily pedantic in juxtaposition. Is the excess an attempt to mystify the premise or is it intentional parody for thinking run amok? Or, is Shop Class as Soulcraft just not full-length book material as suggested here in "DB Copper's" excellent review.

Speaking of DB Cooper, songwriter Todd Snider, who told the life story of the other DB Cooper in song of the same name, also wrote a song called "Looking for Job" in 2006 in which he makes the point that a good craftsman runs the show:
"Boomtown work ain't hard to come by
boomtown workers are
you might be the one running the show but
that don't mean you're in charge"

Snider's case is made in 3 minutes, 47 seconds. No, it's not as complete a thesis nor is it as "timely" (2006). And yes, I realize the reach in comparing a song to a 238 page book. But the song does make an equally valid point about the value of work.

Maybe it's just my education in poetry that makes me lean towards efficiency in a message, the brilliance in what a writer chooses to leave out. I'd love to read Crawford's original essay before it was a book and also hope that I'm in a minority of those who would say so. I hope the majority of readers enjoy Shop Class as Soulcraft with every one of its bells and whistles so they spread the word about its immensely important message of inquiry.

"Today, in our schools, the manual trades are given little honor. The egalitarian worry that has always attended tracking students into "college prep" and "vocational ed" is overlaid with another: the fear that acquiring a specific skill set means that one's life is determined." (19)

"Occupations based on universal...knowledge are more prestigious, but they are also the kind that face competition from the whole world as book learning becomes more widely disseminated in the global economy. Practical know-how, on the other hand, is always tied to the experience of a particular person. It can't be downloaded, it can only be lived." (162)

These two quotes pretty much sum up the focus of this book, that we have lost value and appreciation for craftsmanship and hands on work in this country in favor of a ridiculous belief that somehow the only work that is to be valued is work that is performed "intellectually" in a shirt and tie. Crawford left a political think tank to start his own motorcycle repair shop and this book is his reflections on how our country has come to view work, the values and unstated labels we place on "white collar" vs. "blue collar" work, and how our schools and government are partly to blame for our unrealistic beliefs that everyone needs to go to college to have a "good life." As someone who lost more then $20,000 a year in a "blue collar" job to happily go into the "white collar" teaching profession, only to specialize in teaching a majority of future "blue collar" kids, I have a passionate interest in this debate. I have and will continue to advocate for a revision of these destructive and condescending educational beliefs. Crawford believes, and I agree, that we have turned our schools into "square holes" with no room for our "round" non-college bound kids to fit into by eliminating trade oriented classes such as wood and auto shop in favor of more (less expensive) college prep classes. Crawford reflects on the Catch-22 of addressing or changing this situation by stating:

...any high school principal who doesn't claim as his goal "one hundred percent college attendance" is likely to be accused of harboring "low expectations" and run out of town by indigent parents. This indignation is hard to strand against, since it carries all the moral weight of egalitarianism. Yet it is also snobbish, since it evidently regards the trades as something "low" (32).

I deal with kids everyday in my high school intervention classes that exhibit what happens when years of passive aggressively telling kids through our educational actions that their interests and their skill sets are not as "good" or "valuable" to our community as those of the college bound kids. My kids repeatedly tell me that high school has absolutely no purpose or use for them and looking at what they are up against I can sympathize with their frustrations. When students believe this about school it only results in negative self images and frustration which then, over time, turns into behavior and truancy issues as these "round kids" struggle with being forced into our school's "square holes."

I wish school boards and administrators would take the time to read and think about the issues that a book like this raises so we can begin to give the trade and non-four year college track kids the respect and dignity they deserve, and more importantly, are entitled to. After all, these are going to be the only truly secure professions in our growing global economy. As Princeton economist Alan Binder states in the book, "you can't hammer a nail over the Internet" (34).

I won't try to add to the excellent reviews on the author's difficult writing style. This book is not an enjoyable read.

I would, though, ask why, in such a scholarly book (a magazine article, actually, padded to a book), the author felt the need to twice use the term MF (on page 119 of the paperback). It's such a crude profanity, an insult to all our mothers, and so clearly unnecessary to describe the author's petty frustration in repairing a machine.

This book frustrated me, too, at the waste of a wonderful title. I also enjoyed shop class. In fact, in 11th grade I took two classes of shop each day in place of study halls. (This goes back to the early 60s; don't know if study halls are still around.) I've also gotten grease under my fingernails fixing my cars and motorcycles, and made plenty of sawdust in my life. I chose, after retiring from the Army, to be a tech instead of a manager for many of the reasons the author articulates. In other words, I identified with the author and his message.

But I can't recommend the book. It could have been a valuable call to high school students -- and their parents -- on one of the most critical decisions in a young man's life. Instead, it's a book that will be read only by a few, and not read so much as endured.

I think Crawford would be a great neighbor and friend.

As a writer, he deserved a much better editor.
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Car & Driver magazine, July 2012, has a wonderful letter by a Martin Rosenthal, part of which goes:

"Auto shop is not just about a vocational path. Shop is about accomplishment. The purpose of shop class (wood, metalworking, electric, print, and auto) originally starting in junior high, was to introduce and advance learning skills to create a more well-rounded individual. This was done through the introduction of a step-by-step thinking process, the ability to plan, the ability to visualize, and tactility (the sense of something you can touch and feel).

"Since shop and those skills have disappeared from middle and high schools over the past 40 years, we have graduated far fewer chemists, scientists, mathematicians, and engineers from our colleges and universities."

It's not much of a stretch to say that these two paragraphs save us from reading the book.

We have become a throwaway society. We discard items because it's more convenient to replace than to repair. In college, students become intellectually disengaged. Degrees are nothing more than credentials, and universities do little to cultivate knowledge. "Degradation of work is often based on efforts to replace the intuitive judgments of practitioners with rule following." p.232

Mr. Crawford has many valid gripes about the state of affairs since the industrial revolution, but his criticism of the knowledge sector is thinly based on his relatively brief work experience in this arena. Most of his professional background is in trade crafts such as wiring houses and repairing motorcycles.

In a mass production/consumption society, consistency, reliability and production speed are crucial to serving people's needs. In such a demanding environment, the more production is reliant on rules rather than individuality, the more efficiently this objective is realized. This point does not illude Mr. Crawford, as he is also critical of a mass consumption society. Ultimately, Mr. Crawford must favor a world population a fraction of the current 7 billion. Only then, can the world offer many of its citizens meaningful work that is personalized, where producers interact directly with customers rather than sit in cubes and conform to corporate social rules devoid of any value than advancing the interests of management. And if the world population does not decline significantly, at least shop classes should once again become a big part of K through 12 curriculum to give Mr. Crawford some relief of his angst.

As long as plumbers' cracks are visible to the naked eye, parents will prefer to put their kids through college to prepare them for a stake in the knowledge economy. Mr. Crawford's points are very observant and valid, but he is beating a dead horse. Change has been with us for some time, and the pace will continue to increase, and there is no looking back. Not all work is meaningful, but then again, one's profession shouldn't define him as a person. There is more to life than work, and satisfaction can come from hobbies such as repairing motorcycles, or investing time in family.

I had high expectations for this book. I thought it would be about working with your hands and how that would bring you closer to what is important in life. I read about 95 pages and gave up. I don't know if the author intentionally used "big" words in discussing a subject about getting back to the basics using your mind and hands to perform "blue-collar" jobs and skills, but it was a turn-off. 2010

After getting a five year degree in architecture and working in a cubicle for twelve, I chose a new career working with my hands and love it. The premise of this book rings true with me. I heard the interview with the author on the Diane Rehm Show and was quite inspired. Diane asked the author who the target audience was intended to be. Crawford stated that it had come out in perfect time for high school graduates. He hoped that many would read it before choosing a career and going to college, which fooled me into buying the book since I am a high school level reader. BUT, I have found that you would need to be a college graduate in literature or philosophy just to get through this book. I slogged through the introduction, hoping the rest might lighten up.
Hear is one sentence from the introduction:
"I would like to consider whether this poignant longing for responsibility that people experience in their home lives may be (in part) a response to changes in the world of work, where the experience of the individual agency has become elusive." (too vague for me, and it continues like this)
It is for the academically minded. The target audience would likely be the highly educated who have not been able to justify a move to "lesser" career, getting their hands dirty doing something they have always wanted to do.
I offer five stars for the awakening this book offers for a new economy in America. This is not for all. This is not talking about factory work. This is speaking about the foundation of a strong economy, the people we all need to fix things and build our world. These jobs cannot be shipped over seas.
This book is targeted to the economist, academics, thinkers and policy makers. I was not aware that we have lost shop class in America. With hind sight we can now see this was the beginning of a big mistake, or can we? Please give us our shop classes back!
If you love to read and have a strong vocabulary, go for it! If you plan to buy this for your high school grad, it wont get read. I am look for the reader's digest version.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I kept reading even after it put me to sleep multiple times.

The reason I pushed forward is because I ultimately agree with everything the author presents. His ideas make sense, and I think he's correct in his assertions. He has researched the topic well, and has lived both sides of the equation. So it's clear he knows his stuff.

The problem with his book, however, is that it has no real structure. At times it's autobiographical, at others he waxes poetic, and still others, he's dropping motorcycle mechanic lingo talking about an experience in his shop. There's no common thread that ties his thoughts together. It reads like philosophical stream of consciousness.

The author is clearly brilliant. But it's more impressive to let a reader come to that conclusion on their own that to write sentences like this: "Let it further be conceded that I never would have undertaken to launch such a product as InfoTrac on my own, and that the entrepreneurs who did so took risks." That's just painful to read. And it's one of far too many. If you ultimately choose to purchase this book, you'll re-read probably about a quarter of the sentences because they are written so coarsely and pompously.

Again, the ideas he shares are great. I just wish this book were written with a reader in mind. Or at least edited with a reader in mind.

Disclaimer: This review covers only the first three chapters. That is as far as I got before I tossed it into my "Donate to the library pile." I read some favorable previews of this book and decided to take a chance on it. If you are expecting imaginative writing and insights, you will be disappointed. This reads more like term paper with some personal experience thrown in. There are many chapters that begin: As philosopher___ observed "..." and then an attempt is made to ground these abstract ideas in real world event. The only economic analysis I found was based on a Marxist economist and maybe Richard Florida who is a sort of sociologist economist. I didn't find a single paragraph or page that made me sit back and think that this author had any true insights beyond the obvious that working with your hands and tasks can be a whole lot more emotionally rewarding than writing turgid academic paper.

Working with one's mind instead of one's hands has been considered "better" for as long as I can remember - increasingly so in recent years. Crawford's "Shop Class as Soulcraft" will hopefully help eliminate this prejudice.

Crawford identifies two problems with this thinking. The first is that being able to fix things allows one some control over their life, instead of having to turn to a repair shop when eg. a "low oil pressure light" comes on in one's car. The second is that today's average worker is mired in an ill-defined world where it is often not possible to evaluate the quality of one's work, or to derive a sense of pride. Worse yet, he/she is often required to do a task incorrectly, to suit corporate biases - eg. employment in a "think tank." Worst of all, is being placed into a white-collar situation (managing, writing abstracts) without any area-specific knowledge, and being required to act guided only by a standard management outline. A third, not mentioned by Crawford, is that on-site working with one's hands is probably the occupation most protected from outsourcing. And a fourth is that it bypasses the increasingly exorbitant expenses of going to college.

Crawford doesn't bring these insights down purely from an ivory-towered abstract academic world - he himself owns a motorcycle repair shop and has worked on an assembly-line and as a VW mechanic. He clearly enjoys being his own boss and the mental challenge of diagnosing motorcycle problems and selecting the best repair strategy. On the other hand, it is a bit too easy to see the book as an apology for the career choices he has made, rather than a tested thesis. (P.S.: This reviewer has sympathy for Crawford's conclusions, having worked as a college instructor, middle/upper manager in a sea of back-stabbing and political correctness, and a cross-country truck-driver.)

The book seems to have a germ of a good idea. I say seems, because it is unclear exactly what he is driving at. The writing is turgid and meanders along without heading anywhere for the most part. I guess his point is that it's more fun to repair motorcycles than to work at a boring office job. Yeah, I can see that. It's not a profound philosophical insight, in spite of the constant references to Aristotle, Plato, Kojeve, Heidigger, etc.
Writing, like motorcycle repair, is a craft. Without mastery, the end product doesn't go anywhere. I found the book to be nearly unreadable and not well thought out. Dense, lifeless, and without direction.

This is a fascinating topic and I subject I hold dear to heart but unfortunately, the delivery is too high brow. I found it painful to read and it came across as a college paper written by a grad student too proud of his knowledge of the English language to create a readable treatise on the topic. The result? This book is difficult to slog through to get to the message. I found it unenjoyable and I certainly couldn't recommend it. I am not suggesting to "dumb it down" but it is not very approachable by a large group of potential readers who may find some of the thoughts life altering.

I couldn't get through it. Here are two sample sentences:

"Arguing for a renewed cultivation of manual competence puts me at odds with certain nostrums surrounding work and consumption, so this book is in part a cultural polemic."

"Yet the trades and manufacturing have long been lumped together in the mind of the pundit class as "blue collar," and their requiem is intoned."

He goes on and on like this. You'll want to scratch your eyes out.

Crawford takes on issues few people talk about these days: the meaning of labor, the importance of craftsmanship, and the value of working with one's hands. He also has a no-holds barred approach to an array of peripheral topics: the education of the working class, the place of shop courses in the high school curriculum, and the boredom of a good many jobs in the knowledge economy.

Crawford isn't right about everything, and he wouldn't claim to be. The young graduate student turned mechanic makes no attempt to strike a wholesome balance in his approach to work nor does he offer advice. But he has a lot - an awful lot -- to share. Few books have encouraged me or challenged my complacency as much. Crawford will spur you to action. After reading Shop Class as Soulcraft, I went out and bought a couple of copies for friends and changed the timing belt in my old VW Jetta.

I have been teaching science for 9 years and this book caused me to re-evaluate my reasons and approach to teaching. After reading, I began the design of a new science course centered around the restoration of a classic vw. Now within the CTE envelope that will not only teach my students, but also give them a physical product in their learning.

The book is as advertised, philosophy. Those who don't often find themselves contemplating purpose may not enjoy. Crawford takes an academic look into the satisfaction of creating material products, as opposed to merely generating ideas.

There are many anecdotes from the author and other educators, however this is not meant to be a "read on the toilet" collection of short stories for those generally seeking a quick Oprah uplifting moment. The book is well researched, well written and is exactly what the author preaches: a physical product with his own passion and ideas poured into it.

I'm afraid I liked the idea of this book more than I liked the book itself. The premise of putting aside the career opportunities that come with advanced degrees to repair motorcycles appeals to every cubicle dweller, myself included. While I felt like Crawford did a credible job of presenting his ideas, the book frequently read more like a scholarly paper than a book with mass appeal. I wondered how someone without a Philosophy background would handle it. In the end, I just wasn't expecting to have to work that hard....

Let’s hope Crawford can repair motorcycles better than he can write.

Or think.

He has the kernel of an interesting idea, but perhaps he wrote it up using an abstracted device such as a laptop. If only he’d used a 1934 Smith-Corona with an ink well and a dipstick…

Crawford believes that the mechanical arts are more real and fulfilling than the abstracted pursuits of management, abstract writing, or technical writing (the only roles he really picks on). Specifically, he feels that motorcycle repair and electrician are the right jobs to create lives with agency.

He even, towards the end, comes close to claiming that motorcycle repair is an inherently humanizing endeavor. He does seem to forget that he gave an example, drawn from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, of an idiotic motorcycle mechanic.

Up to this point of logic, I don’t disagree.

But Crawford does not actually make either of these points. What he does is pile up a host of modern rationales like tumbleweed on a desert fence and try to get us to say, “Pretty fence.”

One of the central arguments he does make is that for people to be responsible for their lives, they must be responsible for their things. He calls out the computerized cars, and especially the disappearance of the dipstick on Mercedes Benz engines. There are so many ways this argument is spurious. Why not put a dipstick on every device that requires lubrication? There are at least twenty such on each car.

And if the vast majority of people are not interested in ever tearing down their engines, or even checking the oil, why build to accommodate the hobbyist?

And doesn’t just about any device tend towards lower maintenance, higher utility?

So is he arguing also for cars that don’t work as well as they do?

Another devilish device is the automatic faucet, invented and forced upon us to guard against the tiny percentage of people who fail to turn faucets off. The technology standardizes infantilization to use his big, stretchy words. Worse, the faucet forces us to see our reactions to the unfamiliar as unreasonable, or worse, it threatens to ‘ratchet down our self-respect.’

What automatic faucets actually do is save water, reduce the need for those pesky plumbers because the faucets have fewer moving parts, and provide a far more sanitary use since you don’t have to touch a surface that would otherwise get touched by thousands of hands that have done who knows what in a public bathroom.

I imagine the book is popular in retirement homes where old men (mostly) rail against the new-fangled and strange, and point their remote controls at their wives as they try to shut them up when they say, “Grow up, you old mule.”

There are many plain, average problems with the book. He states that the offshored jobs are and will continue to be those without a mechanical basis. Ever since the invention of the arrow, roles become automated, obsolete, or offshored. (It used to require a qualified editor to publish a book!)

One of the big problems with Crawford’s effort at thought is that he weaves it into the economic background. By not disassociating his philosophical argument from economics, Crawford muddies the waters of his thinking so badly that even he cannot see it.

All endeavors must seek profit, or live off the profit of former times. Different business models at different times find themselves like mosquitos on a fat vein or artery. Others must scramble to survive. Crawford claims construction, plumbing, car repair, and other manual arts will remain indispensable. They are certainly harder to displace. But if someone can come up with a Lego-block DIY structure, or a plug-and-play plumbing system, or a car without a dipstick in an effort to gain an edge on a market, they will. They do.

Another of his big ideas is that different types of work attracts different types of people. Again with the complete blindness to economics. There are 200 million job in the United States (roughly). The majority of these are governed by time clocks and rote skills. Some of those include some construction, mechanic, and other mechanical types of work. Try framing the 1000th identical townhouse, or doing the 10,000 mile checkup on the 10,000th Prius. People may have greater choice than they generally recognize, but not so much that the country could absorb 10,000 new motorcycle mechanics.

Crawford hardly touched on the fate of 95% of working Americans - namely that we work in a hierarchy. Hierarchies are widely recognized for their ability to bring out standard behaviors. Bosses control and manipulate, apply preference and punishment, even the most well-meaning ones, and even in the most abstracted and free-thinking organizations. So another of Crawford’s unstated maxims is, Work for yourself.

He claims he’s working for his customers, but this is disingenuous. He explains in great detail that once a bike is in his shop, he pretty much does what he wants to it, and then adjusts the invoice to reflect his moral dilemma. Does this sound like the behavior of most mechanics? Or like a prima donna who is one of the only people you can get to work on your old bike?

And so we arrive at Crawford’s real point, and the real reason he wrote the book.

Crawford, it turns out is the PERFECT type who does the PERFECT type of work. And he does the work PERFECTLY. His path to perfection, it turns out, is an object lesson to us all. So what he wrote was a memoir dipped into a vat of chicken fat and breadcrumbs, and then deep-fried in popular philosophy. And like many things deep-fried in our lives, the result is surprisingly alluring. Each bite is a well-constructed blend of flavors - he writes good sentences and flowing paragraphs. But don’t tell the doctor you swallowed it, and certainly don’t Google it.

This book is a cogent apologia for skilled manual competence. For those who read the one-star reviews first, I'd just like to note that the majority of those reviewers were merely offended that the author, heaven forbid, has a greater grasp of our own language than they do.

I became aware of this book when I read an excerpt online at the New York Times website. Reading the excerpt prompted me to buy the book. There are aspects of this book that are brilliant.

Historical data and observations about our educational system that are revealing and personal anecdotes that make me applaud the relationship this author has with his work, which in turn affirms me in my work. I have felt strongly over the years that education (for me, resulting but not ended with an MFA)is not paying attention to the product it is creating. I greatly appreciate the author's questions about our educational system and the social considerations we have on the value of blue collar workers.

The book does get bogged down in language that seems a bit arrogant and unnecessary, which is a shame because it is distracting and cumbersome and may make some put the book down before finishing it. But the message is clear; society must review current attitudes about education and work in this country as we must begin to appreciate jobs that can be done in our own communities as opposed to lamenting many outsourced jobs that will never return.

The book touches on issues that are important; so much so that I sent copies of this book to various people I know including one to President Obama. I doubt that he will ever read it - or even see it for that matter, but it is my hope that someone in his administration will. We need to have a dialog about education in this country - and catch up with this new world of ours.

Shop Craft as Soulcraft vividly and coonvincingly demonstrates the plight of our current society, which no longer knows how to perform handcrafts -- from pounding a nail to overhauling a mechanical device. While he points to the necessity of having a literate populace, he also demonstrates the stupidity in the current group-think that insists every child should have a college education, with the more advance degress the better. He also shows, from his own experience, that there can be pride and fulfillment in working with one's hands. An outstanding book that should be read by every high school academic conselor, if not all parents.

Any "knowledge worker" that has found joy in a wknd project that required actually building or fixing something should read this book. And any knowledge worker who hasn't yet taken on that wknd project should read this book as an encouragement to do so.

Interesting essay in regards to trying to reconcile work in our lives. Also an explanation of how the new assembly line is todays cubicle. Notable insights from what it's like to work in an environment where you are only a small part of the whole and that individual inputs are far more difficult to evaluate than, say, using a level to determine if a carpenter built something straight or not. Definitely a call to the value of understanding the entire process and for doing something that has some objective test for being done well or not.

Plenty of good tidbits throughout, one I liked in particular in a discussion about the differences between the office "team" and the work "crew", specifically with regard to politically correctness, office behavior and how we interact. On a crew, the author concludes, you can be freer because, "Where there is real work being done, the order of things isn't quite so fragile." Rather in the office environment there is more stress put on how the person is "as a whole" and mid level managers become more therapists than leaders of work - something I can identify with.

A lot of emphasis on the trades as something that is measureable, difficult to outsource, and financially viable long-term. Nice dig at the middle class couple that may discourage their son from wanting to be like the plumber currently fixing their sink and to go to college instead, meanwhile paying that plumber $80 an hour....

I also appreciated the idea of helping people realize work they may be well suited for rather than just pushing education for education sake.

This book covers a lot of the same ground as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but in a much more direct and concrete way (it has much more modest goals). The writing is more academic than one might expect given the thesis of the book, but the analysis is clear and the prose smooth and enjoyable. Anyone interested in DIY culture should love it.

I loved this book as it is such an unusual combination: on the one hand a deep philosophical understanding informed by a PhD level education, while on the other hand a very "hands on" understanding of the practicalities and significance of work, specifically that of a self-employed motorcycle repair man. He discusses many deep questions about the economic system and identifies why it is so frequently alienating, providing ideas for alternative ways forward. This coincided with me working with someone in the career guidance space who was struggling with many of the very same issues.

"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord." -- 1 Corinthians 15:58

Imagine that you build sand castles for a living. It could be pretty frustrating. When the tide comes in, a wave will wash away all but the memory of your work. Or if the waves don't get you, a careless foot may. Alternatively, the wind will blow your castle down.

It's the nature of a very secular society to seek enormous satisfactions from work. After all, it's what we mostly do on Monday through Friday. Matthew Crawford describes his experiences and observations about how to gain pleasure and meaning from work. He does so from an unusual perspective. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago but prefers to repair old motorcycles.

After you go through the story of his working life, you'll be reminded of all those wonderful vignettes in Studs Terkel's book, Working. You don't have to be president of the United States to find work satisfying.

Mr. Crawford posits these kinds of qualities for making work meaningful:

1. You work on something you care about.
2. You come into contact with those whose lives will be affected by your work.
3. The nature of the tasks is inherently satisfying to you.
4. You get to solve difficult problems.
5. You develop expertise that makes the work more enjoyable and helpful.
6. You use creative thinking.
7. You are not bound by time, space, or quotas.

For much of the book, he describes in glowing terms how great motorcycle repair is for him . . . and some of the satisfactions of electrical work. He also takes Dilbert-like potshots at routine office work, particularly when it is done in an assembly-line-like fashion. From that platform, it would have been easy to describe many more kinds of work, describing what to seek out and what to avoid. But he held back from making such general points where they cried out to be made.

As a management consultant, I was fascinated to see that his view of management consulting was of something very theoretical and impractical. Having done this kind of work for over forty years, I would say management consulting work is often a great deal like motorcycle repair work . . . but without the skinned knuckles. The book would have been stronger if he had taken the time to do what Studs Terkel did and ask workers what they like and don't like about various occupations.

I do agree that exposure to physical work should emphasize appreciating the disciplines involved rather than just mastering some information, making an ornament for the home, or getting through a required course. It is a big mistake to downplay the various trades. Many of my happiest friends learned to be masters of various trades after finding little practical use for their liberal arts degrees.

To me, the biggest missed point related to the spirituality of work. Your job can be one of the ways that your worship the Lord and serve Him. Some pretty grubby work can feel great when you know that it's what the Lord wants you to be doing for Him: One of the most gratifying days of work in my life was digging latrines for an orphanage in Mexico where the children had no indoor plumbing.

Let me leave you with one word of caution: The book opens more slowly and less interestingly than it becomes. Stick with it for at least a hundred pages before deciding that you like or can't stand what's being described.

I selected this book after reading Crawford's New York Times Magazine article "The Case for Working with Your Hands." I am interested in and familiar with some political philosophy, was intrigued by Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," and have explored some readings in artificial intelligence.

I interpret Crawford's core argument to be this: contemporary jobs occupy different positions on a moral spectrum according to how they satisfy or develop the human qualities ( I would say virtues, but virtue is a loaded word for Crawford and others ) individual freedom, creativity, and society. Throughout his book, Crawford establishes two sets of opposing attributes of work: intrinsic value, craftsmanship, agency, freedom, and community against extrinsic value, compensation, autonomy, dependency, and detachment. He tries to show that some jobs, particularly but not exclusively entrepreneurial jobs with tangible output, serve the former set of values. He supplements this argument with experience and examples from his own motorcycle repair work.

According to Crawford, the attributes in each set of values are linked. Work on an object that operates in a comprehensible way can be evaluated objectively. This work has intrinsic value. Further, the worker can improve his own judgment and pattern recognition by carefully observing the object's functioning. With seeming irony, by obeying these external rules of operation and objective measures of output the worker becomes free (I think it is interesting to note the similarity between Crawford's argument and Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative ). Finally, if the worker is also an entrepreneur producing for the community he lives in, he further develops his humanity by collecting feedback and learning to balance his desire for quality output against the time and budget constraints of his customers.

Alternatively, when a worker works on an object that conceals its principles of operation and/or his output cannot be objectively evaluated, the worker is measured by his personality and ability to follow procedures. He also relies on compensation that may be only tenuously connected to the work that he does. Simultaneously, when he merely follows rules he stunts his abilities to observe and judge. Crawford implies that this algorithmization of work, which affects both blue-collar manufacturing jobs (production machinery) as well as white-collar clerical work (business process reform), is deliberate and mostly benefits persons who can afford the machines that capture the knowledge once found only in workers. Crawford contends that these frustrated (alienated might be a better word but is again a loaded one, for Crawford and Marx) workers seek a refuge in, or perhaps are placated by, consumptive activity, where they exercise a perfunctory and mostly meaningless choice rather than the creativity they really need. Finally, in an implicit criticism of globalization, workers that produce for unseen consumers are further isolated. Consequently, this second kind of work, and the contemporary trend transforming many jobs into this form, is immoral because it fails to satisfy human needs and develop human attributes.

Crawford's book is a brisk read. The value added over Crawford's original article is limited, and at times Crawford relies too heavily on anecdote. I also detect that Crawford regrets that human activity is so vulnerable to algorithmization. Where Crawford praises inexpressible, tacit knowledge, I contend that a person doesn't really know something until he can algorithmize the knowledge and communicate it. Likewise, algorithmization can be an equalizing force because people can do things through algorithms that only smarter people can do unaided. Indeed the tacit knowledge that Crawford praises is occasionally used to enforce social hierarchies. Nevertheless, Crawford compellingly argues that the present trend of algorithmization mostly makes workers interchangeable and threatens to stultify our human potential.

This book on manual versus intellectual work covered a fascinating topic but was very difficult to read. The writing seemed like an unedited first draft. The author's ponderous style had me rereading many sentences:
p. 55 "From an economistic mind-set, spiritedness or pridefulness appears as a failure to be properly calculative, which requires that one first be properly abstract."
p 209 "A progressive-republican disposition would take its bearings from our shared potential to realize what is best in the human condition, and regard the conditions for its realization as a common weal that is not to be vandalized with impunity."
If a youth is inspired by Crawford to skip college and instead apprentice as a tradesman, he or she should at least master "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White on the craft of crisp, clear writing.
Although Crawford correctly observes that many college grads end up in soul-crushing corporate cubicles, he fails to acknowledge the many who find rewarding work. From inner city teachers who foster the love of learning to health professionals who aid the sick to lawyers who bring justice to their clients, many highly educated Americans are as fulfilled in their work as any bike mechanic. There is not one word on the millions of doctors and dentists who work with their hands, but only after years of book learning. In short, Crawford sets up a too-easy straw man in the poor cubicle worker, compared with whose lot any other person's pursuits can only seem rewarding.

Ayn Rand described the essence of her philosopy, Objectivism, as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Matthew Crawford doesn't describe his philosophy quite that way; but I think he'd agree with Rand. I enjoyed his book, and think others, both those interested in motorcycles and those just interested in an inquiry into the purposes of life will also appreciate it. The author does a good job of explaining the value of work, and how that value can be maximized when the productive result of that work, and its benefit to others, is close enough to be understood. It may be that the unanswered questions he poses can be found in a study of the Austrian Economists, such as Mises and Rothbard.

Shop Class as Soulcraft deserves to become a classic inquiry into value, such as that achieved by Pirsig with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Simply Awe Inspiring...this book was recommended by Hank Will of Grit Magazine and it helped me understand being a caretaker despite my degrees...simple life...with physically rewarding work is not meaningless or lost on all.

"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord." -- 1 Corinthians 15:58

Imagine that you build sand castles for a living. It could be pretty frustrating. When the tide comes in, a wave will wash away all but the memory of your work. Or if the waves don't get you, a careless foot may. Alternatively, the wind will blow your castle down.

It's the nature of a very secular society to seek enormous satisfactions from work. After all, it's what we mostly do on Monday through Friday. Matthew Crawford describes his experiences and observations about how to gain pleasure and meaning from work. He does so from an unusual perspective. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago but prefers to repair old motorcycles.

After you go through the story of his working life, you'll be reminded of all those wonderful vignettes in Studs Terkel's book, Working. You don't have to be president of the United States to find work satisfying.

Mr. Crawford posits these kinds of qualities for making work meaningful:

1. You work on something you care about.
2. You come into contact with those whose lives will be affected by your work.
3. The nature of the tasks is inherently satisfying to you.
4. You get to solve difficult problems.
5. You develop expertise that makes the work more enjoyable and helpful.
6. You use creative thinking.
7. You are not bound by time, space, or quotas.

For much of the book, he describes in glowing terms how great motorcycle repair is for him . . . and some of the satisfactions of electrical work. He also takes Dilbert-like potshots at routine office work, particularly when it is done in an assembly-line-like fashion. From that platform, it would have been easy to describe many more kinds of work, describing what to seek out and what to avoid. But he held back from making such general points where they cried out to be made.

As a management consultant, I was fascinated to see that his view of management consulting was of something very theoretical and impractical. Having done this kind of work for over forty years, I would say management consulting work is often a great deal like motorcycle repair work . . . but without the skinned knuckles. The book would have been stronger if he had taken the time to do what Studs Terkel did and ask workers what they like and don't like about various occupations.

I do agree that exposure to physical work should emphasize appreciating the disciplines involved rather than just mastering some information, making an ornament for the home, or getting through a required course. It is a big mistake to downplay the various trades. Many of my happiest friends learned to be masters of various trades after finding little practical use for their liberal arts degrees.

To me, the biggest missed point related to the spirituality of work. Your job can be one of the ways that your worship the Lord and serve Him. Some pretty grubby work can feel great when you know that it's what the Lord wants you to be doing for Him: One of the most gratifying days of work in my life was digging latrines for an orphanage in Mexico where the children had no indoor plumbing.

Let me leave you with one word of caution: The book opens more slowly and less interestingly than it becomes. Stick with it for at least a hundred pages before deciding that you like or can't stand what's being described.

I selected this book after reading Crawford's New York Times Magazine article "The Case for Working with Your Hands." I am interested in and familiar with some political philosophy, was intrigued by Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," and have explored some readings in artificial intelligence.

I interpret Crawford's core argument to be this: contemporary jobs occupy different positions on a moral spectrum according to how they satisfy or develop the human qualities ( I would say virtues, but virtue is a loaded word for Crawford and others ) individual freedom, creativity, and society. Throughout his book, Crawford establishes two sets of opposing attributes of work: intrinsic value, craftsmanship, agency, freedom, and community against extrinsic value, compensation, autonomy, dependency, and detachment. He tries to show that some jobs, particularly but not exclusively entrepreneurial jobs with tangible output, serve the former set of values. He supplements this argument with experience and examples from his own motorcycle repair work.

According to Crawford, the attributes in each set of values are linked. Work on an object that operates in a comprehensible way can be evaluated objectively. This work has intrinsic value. Further, the worker can improve his own judgment and pattern recognition by carefully observing the object's functioning. With seeming irony, by obeying these external rules of operation and objective measures of output the worker becomes free (I think it is interesting to note the similarity between Crawford's argument and Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative ). Finally, if the worker is also an entrepreneur producing for the community he lives in, he further develops his humanity by collecting feedback and learning to balance his desire for quality output against the time and budget constraints of his customers.

Alternatively, when a worker works on an object that conceals its principles of operation and/or his output cannot be objectively evaluated, the worker is measured by his personality and ability to follow procedures. He also relies on compensation that may be only tenuously connected to the work that he does. Simultaneously, when he merely follows rules he stunts his abilities to observe and judge. Crawford implies that this algorithmization of work, which affects both blue-collar manufacturing jobs (production machinery) as well as white-collar clerical work (business process reform), is deliberate and mostly benefits persons who can afford the machines that capture the knowledge once found only in workers. Crawford contends that these frustrated (alienated might be a better word but is again a loaded one, for Crawford and Marx) workers seek a refuge in, or perhaps are placated by, consumptive activity, where they exercise a perfunctory and mostly meaningless choice rather than the creativity they really need. Finally, in an implicit criticism of globalization, workers that produce for unseen consumers are further isolated. Consequently, this second kind of work, and the contemporary trend transforming many jobs into this form, is immoral because it fails to satisfy human needs and develop human attributes.

Crawford's book is a brisk read. The value added over Crawford's original article is limited, and at times Crawford relies too heavily on anecdote. I also detect that Crawford regrets that human activity is so vulnerable to algorithmization. Where Crawford praises inexpressible, tacit knowledge, I contend that a person doesn't really know something until he can algorithmize the knowledge and communicate it. Likewise, algorithmization can be an equalizing force because people can do things through algorithms that only smarter people can do unaided. Indeed the tacit knowledge that Crawford praises is occasionally used to enforce social hierarchies. Nevertheless, Crawford compellingly argues that the present trend of algorithmization mostly makes workers interchangeable and threatens to stultify our human potential.

This book on manual versus intellectual work covered a fascinating topic but was very difficult to read. The writing seemed like an unedited first draft. The author's ponderous style had me rereading many sentences:
p. 55 "From an economistic mind-set, spiritedness or pridefulness appears as a failure to be properly calculative, which requires that one first be properly abstract."
p 209 "A progressive-republican disposition would take its bearings from our shared potential to realize what is best in the human condition, and regard the conditions for its realization as a common weal that is not to be vandalized with impunity."
If a youth is inspired by Crawford to skip college and instead apprentice as a tradesman, he or she should at least master "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White on the craft of crisp, clear writing.
Although Crawford correctly observes that many college grads end up in soul-crushing corporate cubicles, he fails to acknowledge the many who find rewarding work. From inner city teachers who foster the love of learning to health professionals who aid the sick to lawyers who bring justice to their clients, many highly educated Americans are as fulfilled in their work as any bike mechanic. There is not one word on the millions of doctors and dentists who work with their hands, but only after years of book learning. In short, Crawford sets up a too-easy straw man in the poor cubicle worker, compared with whose lot any other person's pursuits can only seem rewarding.

Ayn Rand described the essence of her philosopy, Objectivism, as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Matthew Crawford doesn't describe his philosophy quite that way; but I think he'd agree with Rand. I enjoyed his book, and think others, both those interested in motorcycles and those just interested in an inquiry into the purposes of life will also appreciate it. The author does a good job of explaining the value of work, and how that value can be maximized when the productive result of that work, and its benefit to others, is close enough to be understood. It may be that the unanswered questions he poses can be found in a study of the Austrian Economists, such as Mises and Rothbard.

Shop Class as Soulcraft deserves to become a classic inquiry into value, such as that achieved by Pirsig with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Simply Awe Inspiring...this book was recommended by Hank Will of Grit Magazine and it helped me understand being a caretaker despite my degrees...simple life...with physically rewarding work is not meaningless or lost on all.

This book is vastly overrated. The author had an idea that could have been adequately presented in about 3 pages. To make an entire book out of it, he had to add a lot of filler. There are endless passages of what appears to be pseudo-intellectual babble that does not add any insight, explanation, or detail. This is not too surprising given that the author got a Ph.D. in political science but then discovered that he has no use for the degree. Then there are a few chapters on the author's experience with diagnosing and repairing motorcycles. These are only faintly connected to anything else. Reading this book is a profoundly unsatisfying experience.

Matthew Crawford's book "Shop Class as Soulcraft" raises a lot of interesting points about the apparent conflict between brain and brawn in our country. Though it's kind of a dry read, its overall argument is really worth heeding.

I think that a growing number of Americans are beginning to fear that the disconnect between brain and hand is going to push the US over the edge and is hastening our decline and that one way for the US to maintain its economic engine is reconnect hand to brain. This kind of work needs to hold that value that it once did.

There is actually another book I could recommend which makes a similar case but from a female perspective. It's called My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work that Built America; A Personal and Historical Journey by author Jessica Dulong. It's a memoir of a Porsche mechanic's daughter who attends Stanford and becomes a dot-com executive only to be drawn into the world of craftsmanship and hands-on work by becoming one of the world's only female fireboat engineers. A fascinating read which includes a great dose of history and is being released in paperback by Free Press on June 8.

Although this is a very important and worthwhile book and should be required reading for all school district administrators, be forewarned. It is not an easy read. At times it reads like a text book (the same experience I had with "The Closing of the American Mind")the author is obviously very inteligent and highly educated and makes no effort to pander to the masses. Keep a dictionary handy.

Shop Class as Soulcraft, an inquiry into the value of work, by Matthew B. Crawford,
Book Review, by Gene Reilly
I sought this book out. I'd heard enough intriguing things about it, that I made a special trip to the bookstore and paid for a hardcover edition. I was convinced this book was written for me, right down to the cover art, depicting a well worn 50's vintage BMW with Earl's fork parked against the backdrop of a wintery barn. It looked like my old barn, the one I used to own in Connecticut, that housed my 1958 MGA, 2 Vespa scooters, a BMW R100RS, a Hobie Cat, mountain bikes, a full collection of vinyl and an honest-to-god turntable to play them on. Yes, this book was for me. Propelled by the good fortune of finding a kindred spirit, I looked up the website for the author's motorcycle repair shop, Shockoe Moto and was not disappointed. There he's seen wrenching on a 1970's era Ducati 750 GT, a beautiful round case model with tower shafts, and velocity stacks on Del Orto pumper carbs. How do I know, because I cherished my first Ducati, which was the same model, wonderful karma.
You see, my current project is a scratch-built Lotus Super Seven inspired car powered by a Kawasaki ZX1100 engine. I started with a set of downloaded blueprints, a bundle of square section tubing, and a cheap Chinese welder I didn't know how to use. Now, 5 years later I'm nearly done. What a journey, and one that my kindred spirit would most certainly enjoy. So why can't I unreservedly endorse his book?
For one thing, I'm still trying to find out who is this book was written for, me, a banker, a student choosing a career path, a wrench, a poet, policy maker, or a 21st century "knowledge worker" shooting up heroin in his cube? And then there is the question of "what" this book is? Is it a protest against the machine, a diatribe, a lament, a warning cry? It is all of these, I think.
What comes through loud and clear is the love Crawford has for work that marries the hands with the mind. Lots of us get that. In a world where day jobs are often unfulfilling, because our contribution is disconnected from the end product, we experience emptiness at this loss of "control." The book warns us that it is "an inquiry into the value of work" and in case you haven't figured it out yet, the US economy doesn't really value the work of tradesmen. What is perhaps an even darker is that it doesn't value 100k workers toiling away in cube farms either. The further one reads the bleaker the outlook becomes. Mr. Crawford's book is highly cynical, and rightly so. Despite what Harvard professors might suggest to the contrary in the cover blurb, this book offers no hint that a turnaround is possible. I find this disturbing. What workers do we value as a society? Bankers who add no value whatsoever are valued, as are sports figures and celebrities. Ironically, these are people who don't actually do any "labor" at all in the traditional sense. And that's part of Crawford's larger point.
So the book is cynical and dark, and in fact deeply pessimistic. Did I mention bleak? Okay, but so is a Roman Polanski movie, and I like them, so why else does this book irk me? It's the writing. I was an English major and a philosophy minor, so I should have been able to dig into this book with both hands, but the text left me cold. The writing is at it's best when Crawford is storytelling, chatting us up about the old VW shop and the kid who desperately wants to work his way into the shops inner circle. That's fun. I can feel my fingernails getting dirty just reading it. What doesn't work so well for me is the lengthy diatribes written in the prose of a philosopher. And it's not even the fact that it's included, because I think the author is prone to this sort of discourse, and there is a place for it. It's just that it dominates the book, and that plodding construction so familiar to classical philosophy kills part of the joy of reading it for me.
My 4 older sisters have a shorthand for rating guys after dates. The kiss of death is to be labeled an NBD, which stands for Nice-But-Dull. In a way my bro-mance date with this book left me feeling like Crawford showed me the side of his personality that is NBD. And this is frustrating because I know it's not all he's got to give. Anybody who poses with his Ducati bevel drive has more to offer. I'd much rather get out into the garage with the guy, crack open a beer and talk about the virtues of a beautiful bead weld. I get the sense that's where he'd rather be too.
So this is not the book I'd thought it would be. I imagined it would be a book encouraging people to get in touch with their inner craftsman, to push aside fears that "I can't do that" and plunge headlong into the backyard pergola project you've been talking about for years. I thought it would extol the virtues of changing one's own oil and the diagnostic inquisitiveness it inspires as you inspect the drain plug for bits of metal detritus. Well, perhaps Crawford will write that book next, and that will be the book for me. If so, I'll happily buy it.

Shop Class As Soulcraft should be required reading for any student now graduating from high school. Moreover, it should be required reading for any parent preparing to write a tuition check for their child's next semester.

Matthew Crawford does a masterful job of exposing the faulty logic behind what I like to call the "you must go to college to be successful" philosophy. Crawford's theme suggests that we are doing a disservice to our children when, from an early age, we foster a mindset that a college/graduate education is a precursor to success and meaning in life. I would suggest that as a nation we find ourselves with too many college students who are wasting their time and, more often than not, their parents' money.

This is not an argument in favor of an aristocratic educational system. Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that college is not designed to accomodate and develop the talents of each high school graduate. Too many parents already think of higher education as a vocational school. They ask guidance counselors which major their son or daughter should select in order to obtain a "job" at graduation. They view the college diploma as a punch ticket that is traded in for a mid-level management position in some abstract office on graduation day.

This is a perversion of meaning. A college education (as it was originally intended) served to raise a student's level of thought and discourse--it was not designed to provide vocational training.

Matthew Crawford has demonstrated a new way forward in this debate. His work illustrates how certain jobs in the manual trades can never be outsourced (something that frequently cannot be said for the average cubicle worker)and how these positions bring a true sense of accomplishment and meaning to one's life. Of course, Matthew Crawford's work is a polemic and there are those who will vehemently disagree with his premise. Whether you agree or disagree is not the point. This book will make you question how we market the university to our youth and, more importantly, whether or not we have facilitated a generational swindle under the guise of higher education.

I'll begin with what I like about this book. It's an interesting subject from a guy who draws some fresh conclusions about what most of us spend a lot of our time doing: work. A subject that deserves more attention (although possibly these days everyone is thinking a lot more about work in our society...)

And, as a college professor, I honestly don't believe that a 4 year college education serves everyone equally well, or should be the default answer, so I agree with him there--that young people should pause to consider other possibilities, including so-called blue-collar ones.

And yet...As I was reading, I kept wondering and waiting for something REALLY HUGE and OBVIOUS to be addressed.... Where are women? What's a girl to do?

He harps on the outsourcing of labor, and the dumbing-down of labor by management, but he always conceives of a particular kind of workplace with a particular kind of labor, set outside the home, involving employers and employees, or a small businessman or skilled tradesman. People who are in it for the money, one way or another.

Thus Crawford is disappointingly silent about domestic labor. And not only about that, but about women's work, by which I literally mean the work that women do and have been doing.

And so I ask, what about domestic labor, which can't truly ever be outsourced completely? Where does that fit into his conception of meaningful work? What about the mommy track, the second shift, childcare, parenting, the glass ceiling? Or the "pink professions," the ones that are disproportionately female? About the continued disparity in women's pay? (As my mom once said, women cook but men are chefs.)

What about that work isn't cognitively rich and demanding enough or enough of a challenge to his conception of the 21st century economy and its roles to merit inclusion?

Even his examples (granted, he is interested in cars and motorcycles like his male buddies are, the source of a certain amount of anecdotes) are nearly always about men, or traditionally male-dominated forms of labor. He almost always uses the third person pronoun "he". Yes, using "she" occasionally would be nice. It did rankle a bit that seemingly whenever he postulates hypothetical scenarios--say, a young person imagining a future profession--he almost always speaks of a "he" doing some sort of labor that gender stereotypes would code as masculine.

Not to say that a young woman couldn't decide to go her own way, perhaps inspired by this book, but there's a cost to bucking such stereotypes that a young woman would face, not to mention some of the skilled trades dear to him require a certain amount of physical strength or height that not all women would possess (I for instance am quite short and not good at lifting heavy objects!)

Additionally, what about Arthur Clarke's 3 laws of technology? (See: [...] Seems like a glaring omission from this book, which is very much concerned with our interactions with technology.

Finally, although Crawford's rather harsh on consumers, they are the ones footing the bill for the mechanics, carpenters, etc., and in these days of economic crisis, his disregard of consumers and their role hardly seems a moot point.
Ultimately I prefer Primo Levi's book, "The Wrench," which also celebrates labor. Levi writes that the brain is justly considered valuable, but the hand is no less of a noble organ, and offers us a picture of someone who hasn't, as I halfway suspect Crawford has, converted his hobby into his job yet whose story has something to tell us about work. (In response to criticism by Italian Communists of his book, Levi insisted that there are certainly numbing and destructive--to the body and soul-- kinds of work which indeed are alienating and repressive.)

PS: In addition to my original posting, here are a few thoughts in reply to comments... How can ANYONE'S arguments about the nature of work be considered meaningful if he or she omits what half the population does AND dismisses rather perfunctorily any kind of less-traditional hands-on work (computer programming is a tool, and malleable in the hands of an expert--you can "chip" your car nowadays to modify it)?
That's kind of what I'm left wondering after finishing this book. I'd feel the same about a book on domestic labor. It's the whole, complete picture that is the issue for me. It was a nice essay in the NY Times, but it falls apart as a book-length project, as others have already observed in their reviews (not the least because I'm an academic and there's a lot of theoretical stuff Crawford leaves out... curiously...)

I mean, Crawford's just not very convincing to me because of his omission of women (not helped by a catty comment about "sisterhood" and its ways that I noticed towards the end!) and, more generally, by his preaching the gospel of small business ownership. Do the bike mechanics he employs find working for his business more rewarding than working at another shop, doing (I'd imagine) roughly the same thing? Isn't there a certain amount of tedium in all labor, of all kinds, especially once you're employed by someone else and serving the employer's purposes?
I think that Crawford underestimates the amount of satisfaction he derives from *working for himself, being his own boss.* And that's a huge stumbling block, I feel, since we cannot all work for ourselves, nor do many of us wish to. (Startup capital, anyone?)
In fact, in my studies of Italy, it's clear that the lack of larger employers (the disproportionate amount of mom-and-pop businesses in Italy as compared to western Europe) presents a significant set of challenges to Italians: more corruption/nepotism, less tax-paying (a predominantly cash-based economy favors cheating on taxes), more difficulty for young Italians to assert their independence... etc.

I don't think I've ever quite read a book like this. Well maybe that's not fair, esp. those by entitled intellectuals fleeing gainful employment. But imagine a book whose author revels in the fine art of lapping a valve, the risky art of freeing a frozen part, has actually "enjoyed" being a subsistence-level beginning entrepreneur, yet has a PhD in Political Econ (from Chicago no less), seen the lofty heights (sigh) of "think tank" Washington and seems broadly-read as any renaissance man.
If you have ever enjoyed spending work hours fixing and building things and in the other hours sought wisdom in reading, you WILL be enthused by this book. On the other hand, if you know nothing of the mechanic's physical world perhaps you can learn something-- something of how such a man's mind works.

I don't remember where I found out about this book, either from University of Chicago (my alma mater) or the University of Virginia (my daughter's), but I was intrigued by the description of the book and the author. However, I am probably too practical to really appreciate this book. I enjoy working with my hands and creating (sewing and quilting have been my hobby for decades), but never in a million years would I quit my office job and try to make a living out of a quilting business. I would never have been able to support my family, pay the mortgage and send my kids to college on what little (if any) profits from a quilting business. So unlike the author, I took my master's degree from the University of Chicago and got an office job in the Washington DC area, which I've been at for 30 years, sitting in a cubicle in front of a couple of computer screens. Sure, it has had its ups and downs. My husband is an electrical engineer with a master's degree who enjoys woodworking, but he never considered quitting the white-collar job to go into the furniture-making business full-time. If we had tried to make a living from woodworking and quilting, we would be living in a shack and our kids may never have been able to go to college. Maybe after I retire, I can work solely with my hands. But at this stage, it's not a practical option for me.

This book really made me think about not just "work" and what "work" is precisely, but also from there about the world generally and my place in it as an individual -- which is a bit heady and not something I expected. The idea of "being the master of one's own stuff" is a simple one on the surface, but one with deep ramifications thoughout nearly all aspects of one's life. I'll be digesting this book for a long time -- likely for years to come. The writing is excellent, and the ideas presented are clearly outlined and obviously deeply-felt and well-considered. Very highly recommended.

Author has an intelligent thesis but his butchery of language that rambles word after word and page after page really deflates what he's trying to communicate. His claims are largely unsubstantiated by evidence beyond his personal experience.

Based on the title and on the synopses I'd read, I expected this book to make a compelling case for shop classes, trades, etc. and the inherent dignity of a career in the trades. Instead I found chapter after chapter of ten-dollar words, obscure reference with no discernable value. There may be nuggets of a point the author was trying make, but mostly it is little more than a grad school thesis. He completely misses his audience, or has picked the wrong one. As written, no one but philosophy fans and English majors is likely to make it past the second chapter. Are they likely to encourage young folks to enter the trades, or to show any respect for those in the trades? I doubt it.

This has to be among the best modern philosophy books out there. I usually have a hard time picking up and finishing such books, but this one I kept wanting to come back to. Really makes you think and be glad you stumbled upon this gem. Read it.

I find it cumbersome to absorb on the fly. I'm not a phd in anything, I'm a mechanic.

I get the concept after the first 15 pages.

I find it a bit wordy and "referency".

I have not finished the book and after 50 pages I have no real desire to.

I find "the work" a venerable sleep aid.

As others have mentioned this would make a fine TSB or pamphlet.

I feel there is more to be discovered on this topic than the author presents.

I have always dreamt about the apocalypse and how I would be one of the manually and mentally enabled few actually capable of providing the basic elements required for human survival.

Shelter, Fire, Food . . .

A good read . ..

meh . . . I haven't finished it yet but I'm getting some more tonight . . .

Architecture is under this squeeze! Absolutely right on!
The Architectural profession is being assaulted by "BIM" software - software that automatically generates building components - often from vendor supplied details. Young interns are taught to use "predefined" tools for complicated waterproofing and structural assemblies. Put a blank sheet of paper in front of some one & ask them to draw a simple head, jamb, or sill detail --- what do you get?
I rest my case!

Good book, Well written. I enjoyed it and the author has good points however it could have been done in an essay. You don't make as much money off an essay :). Being a tradesman myself, I feel both the knowledge worker and the craftsman are necessary. I would have been interested if he contrasted positive points on the knowledge worker vs, just the craftsman.

Definitely worth reading twice. I've read bits and pieces from writers and thinkers he draws from, but never brought together into such a cohesive argument for what many of us already feel about the times we live in.

I started reading this book about two months ago. I stopped around page 29 due to the vocabulary used being much greater than my own. I realize the author has a PhD. I don't and was having a hard time following his thoughts. I picked the book up again a couple days ago and zoomed through 60 or 70 pages that were more hands-on than philosophical. I did like the parts of the book where he explained mechanical things, such as the procedure for starting an old motorcycle. Those parts would turn philosophical again though and lose me fast. Not an easy read for me.

This book is a polemic concerned with the superficiality and artificiality of the worlds of work and education; our incomprehension, perhaps willful, of the technical nature of our everyday world - how things work - which creates unsettling, though scarcely acknowledged, lives of dependency; and the pervasiveness of "freedomism," or the marketing of pseudo-freedom, which extols consumption choices and downplays the lack of broader control in our lives. As a counterpoise against this ineffectualness, the author suggests that those employed in the manual trades are more inclined, even forced, to engage the world in its messy, real details, and gives them a degree of agency. However, he is concerned that manual work is maligned in our high tech society, which he aims to correct. A significant part of this book consists of the author describing his rather out of the ordinary educational and workplace journey as an example of the benefits and desirability of hands-on work.

The author was basically a professional college student until his mid-thirties when he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in the history of political thought. His intention was to study under the infamous Allan Bloom, professor and author of The Closing of the American Mind, 1987; however, Bloom died. After graduation, the author continued with his conservative slant by becoming the director of a think tank in Washington DC that turned out pro-business propaganda on the environment. The author dismisses that job as mind-numbing unlike his blue-collar jobs. As a teenager, he worked as a residential electrician and then as a novice in a Porsche repair shop. For the last few years, after leaving the think tank, he has operated a small motorcycle repair shop concentrating on older bikes.

The author is not wrong, nor original, in pointing out the deskilling and degradation of work that began with Scientific Management in factories one hundred years ago and more recently in white-collar jobs. Craftsmen were replaced by machine operatives and professionals are being replaced by clerks and computers. And there are no small efforts to disguise workplace realities. He decries the pseudo-participation schemes in places of work that adopt a pretense of limited authority and encourage speaking out, but in actuality enforce a subtle conformity and discourage individual initiative. He also cites credentialism and fear of failure as impediments to the experience of learning in schools, which may be irrelevant as employers often look for compliant personalities rather than intellectual qualifications. He notes that accepting and benefiting from failure is a part of most jobs, especially in his job.

The author seems to want to associate intellectual and moral virtue with tradesmen. It is they who deal with society's everyday problems, at least certain types. But he draws too sharp of a line between white-collar and trade work. Many scientists, engineers, accountants, nurses, etc perform highly essential jobs with a high degree of integrity and involvement, though they may not be able to fix toilets or motorcycles. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly many tradesmen that are simply going through the motions; they are "idiots" to him. Drawing from the Pirsig book, he defines an "idiot" in the world of work as one who fails both ethically and cognitively and cannot grasp his obligation to those he serves - customers. Manual competence is certainly desirable, but is hardly more deserving of respect than other worthwhile, useful competencies. In our highly complex world, the self-reliance of a tradesman that the author so admires probably does not extend very far; certainly not so far as to justify an invidious comparison with white-collar workers.

The author is uncomfortable talking about power relations in workplaces, or in the broader society, which probably reflects his conservatism - conservatives are comfortable with hierarchical social structures. He does acknowledge the detrimental impact of the unchecked power exercised by corporations and their arbitrary manipulation of "flexible" workers to serve corporate interests. But there is no attempt to account for this unlimited power. Of course, the antidote is countervailing power, or the collective actions of workers - acts of democracy. Workplaces and universities would undoubtedly be different with extensive worker and student input. But that empowerment smacks of leftism, which goes against the author's grain. Liberalism is denigrated by the author for its willingness to use the authority of the state to create a level playing field. It's beyond doubt that an individual acting on his own against corporate policies stands no chance. We all cannot just quit and open motorcycle shops.

This book will undoubtedly trigger mixed reactions. It is a short book, but does broadly touch on some fairly undesirable characteristics of workplaces and schools. The author's personal experiences in opening a motorcycle repair shop are mildly interesting and help to make the point of the somewhat unique competencies of tradesmen, but his course of action is not a model that most could follow - we cannot all be tradesmen. Much of what the author sees is unlikely to change. The technical complexity of our world is only going to increase; we can hardly become a nation of tiny shops. The structure of workplaces will be little changed due to market forces. The principle route open to us as a society to affect significant change is through the political system. But that asks a lot of a historically disengaged populace. In theory, workplaces could have mandated works councils with a real voice in the nature of work; we could have trade policies that discourage shipping jobs overseas; and we could restructure colleges to have them comport with what we really need in terms of education. But strangely, he eschews the political process. However, he does not advocate any alternatives that would have society-wide impacts.

Concerning the format and style of the book, it is a bit disjointed and uneven. He switches between general observations and his various jobs frequently. His target audience is not clear; his wording is obscure at times. It is unlikely that the motorcycle repair community will be reading his book.

Regarding the author's duality of Ph.D. and being a mechanic: He is not particularly forthcoming on the financial support he received that enabled these various choices or appreciative of just how unrepresentative his life has been. Most of us were forced to make gainful employment decisions at an earlier age long before we got smart. Furthermore, he does cling to his former life with a position in a university center of study. There is certainly an appearance of do as I say, not as I have done, like seeking fairly useless credentials.

Matt Crawford's "Shop Class as Soulcraft" is the kind of book that makes all of us authors wish we had written this one ourselves...or at least the ones of us who ever took shop class.
The author does a wonderful job of conveying the importance in what has become an almost lost art in so many ways in our modern society. The ability to actually create something and perfect that item, by hand, has largely escaped the X and Y generations of our country and, sadly, stands to become as extinct as the blacksmith and town cobbler.

Crawford does a great job of making us see the importance and work involved in honing a real skill and perfecting the craftsmanship one item at a time. In reality we know that not everyone can work in this manner and that white collar jobs whether in elaborate offices or tiny cubicles must exist, however it does go a ways in showing us as readers just how important a hands on skill can be and how much we should respect- and teach our children to respect- the men and women who work in this way...after all they are no less person or less talented or intelligent than any of us who may make our living as a CEO, designer, writer or cubicle worker. The only difference may be that their pay is often less, while their product is more tangible and lasting.

Will Estell
Oxford, AL
Author, "Wisdom & Wisecracks for the Aspiring Business Owner"
[email protected]

You will get the sense of what Crawford is trying to say from reading a sampling of the other reviews, so I will restrict myself to commenting on his writing style. A number of people have complained about the vocabulary that the author employs; I will let him speak in his own words, with my comments following the page numbers:

I never ceased to take pleasure in the moment, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. "And there was light." It was an experience of agency and competence. (Page 7) Here, he uses the word "agency" to mean "directed action." Needless to say, this is not the first definition listed in the dictionary.

We want to feel that our world is intelligible, so we can be responsible for it. This seems to require that the provenance of our things be brought closer to home. (Page 8) "Provenance" is obviously not being used in its more normal sense of the history of ownership for a piece of artwork. Instead, he is using it to mean "origin or source." Was anything gained by using "provenance" instead of "origin"?

One might be tempted to inquire in a typological mode: What sort of men were these first, the 100 out of 963 who stuck it out on the new assembly line? (Page 42) Why does he even include "in a typological mode"? Why not just say: One might be tempted to inquire: What sort of men were these first, the 100 out of 963..."?

Bohemians live by a different set of rules; they aren't money-grubbing proles. (Page 49) Finally, one of the obscure words that he uses actually adds something: "proles" is shorthand for "proletariats," and has a derogatory connotation. Even so, this sentence rubbed me the wrong way...

The simulacrum of independent thought and action that goes by the name of "creativity" trips easily off the tongues of spokespeople for the corporate counterculture, and if we're not paying attention such usage might influence our career plans. (Page 51) I read Zelazny's "Jack of Shadows"; I know what a simulacrum is. Ah, but here he uses the word in its secondary meaning of "an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute." BTW, I looked these words up in the 2005 New Oxford American Dictionary, second edition. The sense in which he uses a given word is always valid; however, for the words I looked up, his meaning was always the very last one listed.

The idea of opportunity costs presumes the fungibility of human experience: all our activities are equivalent or interchangeable once they are reduced to the abstract currency of clock time, and its wage correlate. (Page 55) Why not replace "the fungibility of human experience:" with "that"? Does its inclusion accomplish anything other than alienating his audience?

But, against the ever-expanding imperium of economics, we do well to insist on what we know firsthand, namely, the concrete heterogeneity of human experience - its apples-versus-oranges character. (Page 55) This gem of a sentence speaks for itself.

He does make a few good points, but (for me at least) his writing style and vocabulary obstructed his meaning "like tea leaves clogging a sink," to borrow a phrase from Orwell. My advice: borrow the book from a friend. That's the only thing that kept me from hurling it violently against the wall every five minutes. Yet as badly as it's written and despite the fact that it's the book equivalent of a 5 minute skit that has been blown up into a two-hour movie, I couldn't quite bring myself to give it a one-star rating.

Interesting, mixed, disappointing. Hands-on work, experiential learning, crafts, learning by doing. This is more of a personal story than a guide to public policy. Perhaps it can be used to help motivate educational and career solutions that meet the diverse human needs described in the "multiple intelligence" works

Mr. Crawford gives a 21st century spin on modern philosophy. His primary focus is on the American focus on higher education vs. manual work. He points out that in classrooms today, educators are taught to "encourage" all children to have the desire to go to university and receive higher education. This focus makes the "option" for technical manual labor out of the minds of today's youth. What happened to shop class? Is the techno drive of the 21st century depleting the need for these jobs? The answer is no! Manufacturing positions might be outsourced, yet if your car breaks down in Chicago, you need a mechanic in that city. Maybe the truth lies with the rapid rise in the cost of living. Are we forced to peruse jobs with no meaning for the sole reason of making money to live? Read this book and listen to Matthew Crawford interview on the Diane Rehm Show archives on NPR (6/2/09).

This is a provocative, serious and totally engrossing book. Based solely on the title, I expected a light -- maybe even sentimental -- essay about shop class, but instead I found a rigorous treatment of important ideas in direct, accessible prose. I plan to re-read this book soon.

An interesting and entertaining book when motorcycle mechanic, Matthew B. Crawford, is writing. "Pretentious twaddle", to steal a phrase from another reviewer, when philosopher, Dr. Matthew B. Crawford is writing. Education was wasted on this man. Read chapter four but don't waste your time on the rest of the book.

For once the hype surrounding a recent book is well-deserved. I found it a compelling read, well-argued and directed to a matter of vital concern. It deserves careful thought and extended discussion that does not descend into quibbling over minor weaknesses in the case it mounts.

The middle section of this book was interesting. The author's personal story enlivened the book's thesis, but the book was spoiled for me by excessive verbiage that at times read like a graduate student's thesis. The ideas are interesting, but could have been articulated in a far more coherent and accessible way for a more successful and enjoyable read.

ugh. I made it through the intro and had issues with his assertions, especially that intelligent people no longer found the lure of Wall Street's money enough to enter the fray. Read half of the first chapter then skipped around the book and found it written by someone who must have a doctorate in political philosophy. Oh, wait, he does. He would have benefited greatly from a more editorial editor.

The idea of the book is great, and I really enjoyed the few stories of problem diagnosis and solution - the stories of his actual work on actual bikes or actual cars are great stuff. Unfortunately that is less than 10% of the book. The philosophy, the quotations, citations and name dropping - My Eyes Glazed Over [MEGO] - it seemed at best pointless - and the philosophical writing is as artificial as the mechanical anecdotes were real. Glad I bought this as a remainder.

And yes, I went to engineering school. "mens et manus"

This book is a really hard slog. The book wanders aimlessly. Its all coherent (if a little esoteric) and understandable, its just rather boring and dull. If the author can say it in 10 sentences or 1 sentence - he'll say it in 20.
I almost gave up several times and finally got to chapter 4. This is by far the best chapter in the book as the author (finally) talks about his background and shop experiences. Even so, this chapter is still rather dull. Think about what you have experienced in your shop, garage or shed. Even the average hobbyist could come up with a dozen anecdotes on paper. You wont find them in this book. It's all rather humourless and - lets say it again - dull.
The book would have been better as a tightly edited 80 page essay. I think the author forgot to ask himself - who is my target audience ? The author is writing for writers and academics. I cannot recommend it.

As a university professor who teaches literary theory and just recently completed a course on "Advanced Engine Performance," I devoured this book eagerly. Stunning on several levels, from critiquing society's recent prejudice against shop class and tradesmen (ever notice that plumbers and mechanics don't fare well in pop culture?), to articulating a deeply theoretical understanding of the phenomenology of rebuilding bikes, to his simple confession of finding academia unfulfilling (I'm with you, brother). How many books can you say adequately explain the dialectics of labour as self-knowledge as well as explain why valve springs that are too stiff can affect the longevity of the engine?

Being a quasi-mechanic myself, I also enjoyed Crawford's appreciation of what separates skill from mere ability. I think some of the other reviewers completely missed this distinction. DB Cooper Dan, for example, tries to simplify the argument like this: "In, say, a school, it is much more difficult to diagnose a case of students who don't learn what they could than it is to notice a light that doesn't light." I agree that it takes intelligence to diagnose learning abilities, but
Crawford in fact successfully argues that the bias towards supposedly more cognitive careers, such as educators, dismisses manual trades as merely, if I may use Cooper's analogy, simply "replacing light bulbs." That's a janitor, not a mechanic. A mechanic rebuilding the engine must diagnose the main bearings to see if the oil supply was decreased, or if they were overheated from abuse, or if the oil supply was bad (no oil changes), or if the bearings themselves were faulty. A mechanic is to be distinguished from your backyard "parts replacer" who simply runs to the parts store and replaces things until the problem goes away. Heck, even that is above the skill level of many "educators," as I gather from the strange conversations I have with my colleagues about why a specific lobe separation angle on the camshaft determines where on the rpm curve the engine will make power. There's a great deal of cognitive analysis to being a mechanic, in addition to theory (which is why engine builders won't share the results of their experiments), testing, and consumption of knowledge from many fields, like metallurgy, thermodynamics, and chemistry. Only in the past century has a tradesman been relegated to the performance of menial tasks, in part because people at large have resigned themselves to sending off their I-pods when they want a new battery installed. Can you imagine telling your grandfather why you are sending off your I-pod without sounding like a buffoon? Something has changed over the years, something that we need to rediscover.

Also, the reviewer "CE" seems to have subjected Crawford's book to an either/or simplification, by saying: "it's oddly interesting that the author can make such a case for abandoning knowledge work in favor of the trades." Crawford definitely does not advocate that accountants quit their jobs to take up carpentry en masse. He is simply arguing that society has degraded itself dramatically by degrading the manual trades.

My sincere hope is that after reading this book, readers will not try to prevent their children from learning welding, as my mother did, or will not tell their children that if they don't study they will have to have a job with their names on their shirts, as a colleague of mine tells her children. Like physical, artistic and musical education, shop classes do more than just teach a skill. They help create full, confident human beings. I think the negative reactions to the book come either from people defensive of modern education practices and choices (the horror, the horror), or from the sneer that comes when an academic sees a person covered in grease and coveralls. If you've ever repaired anything, not replaced but repaired, and felt that boost of confidence and pride, buy this book. You were definitely on to something.

For once the hype surrounding a recent book is well-deserved. I found it a compelling read, well-argued and directed to a matter of vital concern. It deserves careful thought and extended discussion that does not descend into quibbling over minor weaknesses in the case it mounts.

The middle section of this book was interesting. The author's personal story enlivened the book's thesis, but the book was spoiled for me by excessive verbiage that at times read like a graduate student's thesis. The ideas are interesting, but could have been articulated in a far more coherent and accessible way for a more successful and enjoyable read.

ugh. I made it through the intro and had issues with his assertions, especially that intelligent people no longer found the lure of Wall Street's money enough to enter the fray. Read half of the first chapter then skipped around the book and found it written by someone who must have a doctorate in political philosophy. Oh, wait, he does. He would have benefited greatly from a more editorial editor.

The idea of the book is great, and I really enjoyed the few stories of problem diagnosis and solution - the stories of his actual work on actual bikes or actual cars are great stuff. Unfortunately that is less than 10% of the book. The philosophy, the quotations, citations and name dropping - My Eyes Glazed Over [MEGO] - it seemed at best pointless - and the philosophical writing is as artificial as the mechanical anecdotes were real. Glad I bought this as a remainder.

And yes, I went to engineering school. "mens et manus"

This book is a really hard slog. The book wanders aimlessly. Its all coherent (if a little esoteric) and understandable, its just rather boring and dull. If the author can say it in 10 sentences or 1 sentence - he'll say it in 20.
I almost gave up several times and finally got to chapter 4. This is by far the best chapter in the book as the author (finally) talks about his background and shop experiences. Even so, this chapter is still rather dull. Think about what you have experienced in your shop, garage or shed. Even the average hobbyist could come up with a dozen anecdotes on paper. You wont find them in this book. It's all rather humourless and - lets say it again - dull.
The book would have been better as a tightly edited 80 page essay. I think the author forgot to ask himself - who is my target audience ? The author is writing for writers and academics. I cannot recommend it.

As a university professor who teaches literary theory and just recently completed a course on "Advanced Engine Performance," I devoured this book eagerly. Stunning on several levels, from critiquing society's recent prejudice against shop class and tradesmen (ever notice that plumbers and mechanics don't fare well in pop culture?), to articulating a deeply theoretical understanding of the phenomenology of rebuilding bikes, to his simple confession of finding academia unfulfilling (I'm with you, brother). How many books can you say adequately explain the dialectics of labour as self-knowledge as well as explain why valve springs that are too stiff can affect the longevity of the engine?

Being a quasi-mechanic myself, I also enjoyed Crawford's appreciation of what separates skill from mere ability. I think some of the other reviewers completely missed this distinction. DB Cooper Dan, for example, tries to simplify the argument like this: "In, say, a school, it is much more difficult to diagnose a case of students who don't learn what they could than it is to notice a light that doesn't light." I agree that it takes intelligence to diagnose learning abilities, but
Crawford in fact successfully argues that the bias towards supposedly more cognitive careers, such as educators, dismisses manual trades as merely, if I may use Cooper's analogy, simply "replacing light bulbs." That's a janitor, not a mechanic. A mechanic rebuilding the engine must diagnose the main bearings to see if the oil supply was decreased, or if they were overheated from abuse, or if the oil supply was bad (no oil changes), or if the bearings themselves were faulty. A mechanic is to be distinguished from your backyard "parts replacer" who simply runs to the parts store and replaces things until the problem goes away. Heck, even that is above the skill level of many "educators," as I gather from the strange conversations I have with my colleagues about why a specific lobe separation angle on the camshaft determines where on the rpm curve the engine will make power. There's a great deal of cognitive analysis to being a mechanic, in addition to theory (which is why engine builders won't share the results of their experiments), testing, and consumption of knowledge from many fields, like metallurgy, thermodynamics, and chemistry. Only in the past century has a tradesman been relegated to the performance of menial tasks, in part because people at large have resigned themselves to sending off their I-pods when they want a new battery installed. Can you imagine telling your grandfather why you are sending off your I-pod without sounding like a buffoon? Something has changed over the years, something that we need to rediscover.

Also, the reviewer "CE" seems to have subjected Crawford's book to an either/or simplification, by saying: "it's oddly interesting that the author can make such a case for abandoning knowledge work in favor of the trades." Crawford definitely does not advocate that accountants quit their jobs to take up carpentry en masse. He is simply arguing that society has degraded itself dramatically by degrading the manual trades.

My sincere hope is that after reading this book, readers will not try to prevent their children from learning welding, as my mother did, or will not tell their children that if they don't study they will have to have a job with their names on their shirts, as a colleague of mine tells her children. Like physical, artistic and musical education, shop classes do more than just teach a skill. They help create full, confident human beings. I think the negative reactions to the book come either from people defensive of modern education practices and choices (the horror, the horror), or from the sneer that comes when an academic sees a person covered in grease and coveralls. If you've ever repaired anything, not replaced but repaired, and felt that boost of confidence and pride, buy this book. You were definitely on to something.

I tend to agree for the most part with "D B Cooper 'Dan,'" however I believe that his last paragraph and specifically the last line of his review is spot on. Crawford unfortunately gives the impression that his view is right and the entire system most of us find our selves participating in is incorrect. Crawford sadly lumps all business or "educational regimes" as inherently created of poor design perpetuating intangible goals resulting in a morality that is confused and designed by the corporation.

This book is a work in impatience in which he voices his intolerance for the white collar world. Not one of his white collar jobs did he hold on to for very long. Certainly not long enough to truly understand their intricacies and thus be able to truly argue against the white collar world. Crawford has rushed through these brief stints in the white collar work force and then states his experiences as The Truth and evidence against ALL office employment.

In this impatience he has failed to take a great mouthwatering concept, one that could easily have created a movement, much as Michael Pollan is undertaking with the American food system, and instead Crawford churned out a rough draft-like rambling of his own misplaced anger and frustration for the office world in which he does not fit.

Crawford's largest failure in this book, I believe, is that he is missing his target audience. The scholars and individuals in academia eat this up, it's a theory, it's idea is great, and one that academics can fall behind and say, "job well done." Yet those individuals have little to no practical experience in either the white collar cubicle world or the blue collar trades. I think of my cousin who is exceptionally gifted with his hands, he is intelligent and he should have received a formal education in the trades, instead with the intense pressure from his parents he struggled to stay in college. After 8 years he finally graduated. My cousin is now struggling immensely with the white collar world. My cousin is the perfect example for Crawford to use in his book, yet my cousin would throw this book in the trash after the first two pages due to frustration because it is not written to or for him. If this book were to speak to those struggling or the parents struggling to figure out how to educate themselves or their alternatively gifted children then we would see a great work, instead the book is aimed poorly, it comes off as snide and disconnected to reality.

Crawford tells us that his experiences are The Example for why his word is the Truth, unfortunately contrary to what impression he gives, Crawford is just one-six-billionth of the Truth and his account of it does not equal any more than yours or mine.

This book should be required reading for all college presidents, principals and heads of all secondary schools and parents of children under 10. Perhaps with guidance from Mr. Crawford our institutions of learning could revamp their offerings, parents could rethink the value of prestigious decals in the car's rear window, and the nation could begin to profit from a new generation of skilled and engaged citizens. But don't take my word for it, read it yourself and then join the movement!

One can share experiences and the results of work through the Internet. With the speed shop group an education was hands on, but the teacher would not be all knowing. The larger group on the Internet should know more.

I could be sitting in my cubicle at work bored out of my gourd - my only saving grace is that I can review problems encountered during my last Shade-Tree Mechanic episode with my old Chevy, or the planer that sits at home, longing to plane that beautiful piece of wood just waiting to be stained by my home-made walnut stain and then buffed with my special beeswax and linseed oil wax. Somehow thinking and planning about all that takes up the slack in my otherwise-boring "establishment" job.

So, with this mindest, I could easily identify with Crawford's musings about being caught in the 9-5 cubicle rat-race while better things lie and beckon outside of that realm. He was able to transcend this and do what he loves -- albeit using his fellowship monies to buy tools and other equipment (hmmm.... our tax dollars at work -- did he ever repay it?).

However, his philosophy wears thin after a while, rambles on far too long, and gets way too convoluted at times.

His musings were sometimes amusing, such as: "The Betty Crocker Cruiser" mindset he describes, and the fact that some of the dedicated hands-on crasftpeople are an "affront to the throwaway society" ring very true. So does his description of the warehouse where he set up shop, with its "underground economy, completely invisible from the street" -- a very compelling and interesting world of its own.....!

As someone who enjoys working with my hands, enjoys the feel of a combo wrench, a splat of Mystery Oil and the grit and determination needed to unbolt an old manifold, I enjoyed his descriptions and musings re some of the rebuild and repair jobs he encountered with motorcycles and cars. And when he delved into the zen that sometimes accompanies the focused mindset (almost as a meditation) needed to get to the heart of the problem while totally applying one's being to the task at hand, it was at that time when the book really came together via a combination of philosophy, heart, soul and structure.

BTW "Wife Beater" is the misnomer given to a white undershirt (which should be called "white/tank/athletic undershirt"). After taking my mother too many times to the Emergency clinic at the local hospital, I really don't care to encounter that word especially when it's used to describe an article of clothing.

I agree with and was inspired by this book. I think. It's is a tougher read than a king James Bible. I thought I was at least average in terms of vocabulary but this book was unrelenting in the use of big words. At first I started looking them up as I went, then I started making up my own meanings for words I didn't know, then I would just skim and leave out the big words, kinda like the secret Bible codes. So maybe I missed the point entirely. Great ideas, very tedious read for an airline pilot.

Hard to read. If the word "posit" appeared once, it appeared a hundred times and at one point I said if this word appears one more time I'm going to DE-posit this book in the trash can. Good things to say but not much organization or story. Seems like Mr. Crawford is trying to justify his newfound occupation to his PhD friends. He doesn't have to--they need people like him.

To not repeat the arguments of previous reviewers, I will just add why I found the book to be a disappointment. The author starts with a solid premise, that craftsmanship, be it mechanical, electrical or creative, is good. Valuable, rewarding, necessary, fun, self-fulfilling. Yet he counters with a bitter argument against knowledge-based work that is out of date, based on lack of experience and just plain wrong. The caricature of team building and lack of individual contribution was appropriate for some management consultants, in the 80's and 90's, but was never successfully applied, nor utilized in successful, research and technology based companies, either established or entrepreneurial. Wonderful cartoons like Dilbert expose the day to day issues of management based organizations, but surely he can't believe that is reality, yet he seems to have that view. It just does not match my reality.

As a postscript, he even denigrates in every way (boring, poorly-designed...ad nasuem) a motorcycle that I owned early in its life, the V-4, shaft drive, water cooled Honda Magna V45. He can use it as his whipping boy, but for me the V45 was smooth, reliable, plenty fast. What would have been better? A Harley? A fall-apart Brit bike? An out of reach Italian beauty? A cafe racer? Try riding a 300 mile day on one of those. Ah, I know. A 10 year old BMW, depreciated enough to be just affordable, needing a mere a touch of restoration.

I thought this would be a lot of examples of wisdom gained out in the field; instead you get a guy referring to some of the stuffier philosophers for quotes, and a rambling narrative that might serve as an okay autobio but that fails to show how shop class, for instance, might be good for you. Who cares if you would rather work on bikes? Most of us could say the same. We do most jobs because we need the paycheck - what we want doesn't enter into it. Talk about building character, or how manual work could improve you (like the way that playing guitar gets your non-dominant hand learning and your brain gets a workout in the process). Maybe I'm just the wrong reader, but the title and the book didn't go together for me. And I would suggest losing the pious lecturing tone that seems to be a leftover from academia. There's a little good stuff about some bike work, but not enough to recommend this.

Perhaps Mr. Crawford needs to read F. Bastiat who wrote how free markets produce free men, not the other way around ..... smack of socialism but a good effort. Nice reference to work of J Schumpter. Some thought provoking ideas on the nature of work, knowing and doing.

When I read this, i jumped back to my teens and college summers when I landscaped and finished concrete 12+ hours a day. I never slept better. I will be sending my kids to trade schools, then college, if they want to, but they'll have the option. One of my neighbors is a carpenter and painter, and has a bigger net worth than most white collar guys I know, because he's the "superintendent" for over 100 apartments, that he owns and maintains.

This is a dreadfully written book of stilted prose, jargon, and academic obfuscation. It could have been so much better if only the author (his PhD in political philosophy clearly shows in his style) had made it accessible to the masses. One wonders how many of his celebrated mechanics and plumbers could make it through the text!

This book is heavily research oriented and could almost pass as a college thesis or dissertation. It gets very philosophical at times, but is enjoyable to read and encouraged me to pursue a career as a mechanic. The art of working with our hands and doing physical labor is truly lost and must be revived. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is unhappy working in an office and wants to pursue a practical and meaningful career that can offer both personal satisfaction and money.

Now, I have not had the luxury of finishing this book but being a person who holds a philosophy degree, Mr. Crawford cannot for the life of him, write a clear, concise, and no-BS argument. His constant meanderings and shallow references to "philosophers of age-old" really agitated me. He basically took little snippets of "smart sayings" from each of these philosophers and spun them to make sense of whatever the point he is trying to convey and he failed--utterly--at conveying those points, if he had any points to convey. He also made references to literature and history, which were equally tiresome if you are familiar or well-versed in either subjects. They ultimately boiled down to nothing. Thus, giving the "illusion" that he is educated, knows what he is talking about, and at the same time, appear to be coming from a background that is well-grounded.

Many other reviewers noted that his writing is abstract. No. Just no. Not abstract. Rather, it was just plain confusing with no conclusion other than the conclusion he thinks he has made at the end of each chapter. You see, abstract is when there's an idea you want to convey that ordinary language cannot perfectly convey in a single word. So you must create your own words in the English language and then carefully explain that word-creation to make sense of the idea that you want to convey. What he chose to do is not this. What he chose to do is assume that the audience knew what he was talking when he made references to literature, philosophy, or history. That is one of the top sins in writing any kind of essay. You do NOT assume that the audience knows what you're talking about--EVER. Always assume that the audience doesn't know what you're talking about and begin from there. Nope! This guy didn't.

I've only read through half of his book and I'm afraid that I cannot finish it. I liked the cover. But everything else? It seriously lacked substance. Every chapter towards the end, I cannot help but say in my head "So? What's so bad about that?" He never conclusively refutes competing arguments. He throws a bunch of strawman arguments and red herrings and false dichotomies in the mix and call them out that crap. Well of course it's crap, because you're pointing out all the faulty thinking in those matters! Any person with a high school diploma can make that sort of deduction.

In short, avoid this book. You won't gain anything from reading it.

I was excited to start this book, hoping that it would be either a serious discussion of how the nature of work is changing or a compelling riff on the fulfillment offered by working with ones hands. Instead I found it an annoying trudge through academic speak. If a measure of good writing is that the words slip frictionless through the eyes and into mind and heart, this writing is just the opposite -- a struggle through every page to figure out what the heck the author is trying to say. The writing is bad, bad, bad in the way that academics will eschew clear communication to -- I suppose -- convince a reader that their point is profound due to the egg-headed incomprehensibility of their argument.

Regarding the content, I didn't find anything new or insightful here. The author compares the blue-collar work he enjoys -- electrician and motorcycle repairman -- to the only two white-collar gigs he'd had -- writing article abstracts for an online company and a few months as the director of a political think tank -- and makes negative conclusions about all "knowledge worker" employment. Drawing on this thin experience and quotes from political philosophers didn't add up to anything approaching a convincing argument for me. Had it not been a book club selection, I never would have finished this. Complements, however, to the titling and cover art, the best aspects of this book.

The title and premise is what attracted me to this book. Skimming through the introduction, I had the impression that it was written for a general audience, which excited me enough to buy it. Once I started plowing into it though, I quickly discovered such was not the case. It is written for an educated elite well versed in philosophical principles. Using long, compound sentences and large, multi-syllable words to describe simple concepts, it reads more like a Ph. D thesis than a mass-market book trying to a make relevant point at this time in history.

I had to give up reading it, since I kept losing the writer's gist and had to backtrack. Part of the problem may have been I was reading it poolside while on vacation. It is not a light book for an easy read or a vacation.

Caveat - I have not read the book. I heard the author speak and answer questions. When pressed, he admitted that his wife works for a company which provides health care for herself and their family. He admitted that alone, he would not have access to health care. Entrepreneurship, whether in fixing motorcycles or fixing computers, comes with the same universal responsibilities those of us who are not independently wealthy share - the responsibility to feed, clothe and shelter (and provide health care for) ourselves and our dependents. This book appears to glorify something rather intangible and completely out-of-reach of most working stiffs - a self-defined "satisfaction" gained from the same work which provides us with our livlihood. I would wager that only a very small percentage of the population has attained this intangible "something". Our work lives do not have to define us as people, IMHO.

This author seems to be just another professional academic that wants people to be aware of the life choice he made. Apparently the work itself is not rewarding enough and he want to brag a little or his decision does not allow him the spending money for the life he is used to so he is hoping for some book sales. The author has a subject that is like education. Most will say that it is true that these are very important things but will not change the situation or put more money into improving the situation. The book tends to ramble and repeat itself. Go back into your garage and keep quiet. Manual laborors do not need you giving them a bad name.

First off let me admit that I am in finance, and am a hobbyist/wannabe carpenter. This book seems targeted to me, and yet I found it overly verbose and belaboring concepts using painful language. There could be a very good essay here of commentary for people to re-evaluate their career options, especially for young people, however the author really takes the reader on a philosophical journey. I found the language and writing to be extremely academic and unfriendly. This was not a fun or interesting read for myself.

My quick summary of this disappointing book: "If you don't know how to use a hammer and nails then your work with a mouse and keyboard is meaningless."

The book never acknowledges that *competence* of any kind is what is valuable, not the type of labor deployed in the service of competence.

This is one of the worst books I've attempted to read in a while. I could not get beyond the second chapter. Not finishing a book is rare for me. The author's style is unnecessarily dense and obscure; it was, for me, unreadable. The problem is not that the author is an academic. I read academic papers regularly in my work. It is just poorly written. Apparently, craftsmanship in writing is not an ideal for the author.

I always marvel when a fascinating topic can be drained of life by academics like Mr. Crawford who justify their relevance by projecting pretentious ideas onto the human experience, like the satisfaction of making something. I respect his objective, but not the manner with which he attempts to achieve it. I ultimately dropped it before the end of chapter two, concluding that the author was trying to create the modern version of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and failed. I'm sure I probably "missed the point", and I'm okay with that.

What this book needs is a good journalist, someone who can take this guy's impenetrable, pompous writing and turn it into something that the reader might actually enjoy reading. It reads like a thesis or some sort of study that needs translation before it's fit for public consumption.

I had high expectations for this book because, conceptually, it seemed so relevant, and because it received great reviews. But doubt set in as soon as I held the book in my hands and looked at the cover. Matthew B. Crawford. How many mechanics use their full first names and middle initials? My suspicions were confirmed after the first few pages: The pretension of academia is still very much alive in this guy. So alive, in fact, that even if he came down from his Ivory Tower, he'd still be sitting on his high motorcycle. As one review already noted, it's clear that Crawford is giving a greasy high-five to his Ph.D. buddies while pretending to be a common man. And not only is the writing difficult -- I frequently had to reread paragraphs -- it's also incohesive. I found myself asking, "Where is this going?" after every chapter.

It's ironic that Crawford continually rails against the abstractions often found in white-collar jobs, yet uses language that is convoluted and, yes, abstract. The inside jacket of the book proclaims, "A philosopher/mechanic destroys the pretension of the high-prestige workplace..." Someone needs to tell Crawford pretension is a lousy weapon against pretension.

I am very disappointed in this book. Not from a context mind you but from a narration stand point. I was very excited about the book. I worked my way through an undergraduate degree and two masters degrees by working in skilled labor positions. I too see how the disappearance of shop classes available to our youth is not only eliminating the kids who do not aspire to college from being able to contribute to society, but it is also eliminating kids who need a better paying job in order to attend college. The reason I disliked this book and finally decided not to finish, after the introduction and two chapters is the narration. This book sounds like it is written from a stuffy sweater wearing socialite who seems intent on impressing us with their vocabulary. A book about blue collar professions should be written with a voice, that mainstream America can relate too.

Like many other reviewers, I also found this book to be a really dull read and I didn't make it past the second chapter. I really did want to like this book. This book comes across as academia gone wrong, where the author has tried to turn his thesis into a novel. This book is convoluted and every sentence is jotted with unnecessary `big words to sound smart' - where the overall effect is just jarring. I'm guessing the people who enjoyed it are pompous gits who like using words such as grandiloquent (you know what I'm getting at).

Many good ideas, but the
language is so stilted, so academic. The publisher would have you
believe that Crawford is a motorcycle mechanic who's written a book,
but he is in fact a tenured professor who happens to own a motorcycle
shop. The high falutin' language (including endnotes) completely
undermines the author's thesis.

It only took me to page 13 or something of the introduction to feel, as a female, excluded from this book.

When Crawford, writing in the 21st Century, uses "man" as in "Man wants to feel ownership of what he possesses," i.e. as a supposedly gender-neutral term, he seems either to be clueless re: P.C. language or to simply not care that he is not including women.

The author is educated, having earned postgraduate degrees (I don't remember if just a Master's or a PhD in political philosophy or something), and shows in this book that he is fully able to write "academese," so the exclusion of females feels pretty intentional.

(By the way, I think the physicality of housework would have been an interesting inclusion in this book. Does an office worker's attitude toward the cubicle change depending on whether they do or don't also have to do all the physical work in their home?)

Felt like I was being punished by a college professor. Wish I had my $25 dollars back. Thats at least a few Popular Mechanics mags and some WD40. Matthew would not be a fun shop buddy. "Matty! Please shut the hell up".

As a graduate of a Vocational/Technical school(1975), I was anxious to read an endorsement of my choice. I have also been very fortunate to build a business that employs over 100 Architectural Woodworking craftsmen who take pride in thier work, and thier ability to provide for thier families by way of practicing thier trade. As stated, I don't have a college education, but the vocabulary the author chose to rationalize the idea was boarderline condescending. I believe this was written for his Phd. friends and Masters degree underlings. I found it to be a difficult read.