
Shop Class as Soulcraft
An Inquiry into the Value of Work
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Narrated by:
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Max Bloomquist
A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands
Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant best seller, attracting fans with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.
©2009 Matthew B. Crawford (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"It's appropriate that [Shop Class as Soulcraft] arrives in May, the month when college seniors commence real life. Skip Dr. Seuss, or a tie from Vineyard Vines, and give them a copy for graduation.... It's not an insult to say that Shop Class is the best self-help book that I've ever read. Almost all works in the genre skip the 'self' part and jump straight to the 'help.' Crawford rightly asks whether today's cubicle dweller even has a respectable self.... It's kind of like Heidegger and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." (Slate)
"Matt Crawford's remarkable book on the morality and metaphysics of the repairman looks into the reality of practical activity. It is a superb combination of testimony and reflection, and you can't put it down." (Harvey Mansfield, professor of government, Harvard University)
"Every once in a great while, a book will come along that's brilliant and true and perfect for its time. Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft is that kind of book, a prophetic and searching examination of what we've lost by ceasing to work with our hands - and how we can get it back. During this time of cultural anxiety and reckoning, when the conventional wisdom that has long driven our wealthy, sophisticated culture is foundering amid an economic and spiritual tempest, Crawford's liberating volume appears like a lifeboat on the horizon." (Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots)
Old paths were the best
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Quite an analysis and deconstruction of modern management
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Really enjoyed this
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a worthwhile read multiple times over
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Could have been a short story
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Had high hopes
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The idea of agency
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Takeaway: Deal not in ambiguous abstractions of life; get your hands dirty
Hands and brain: a matching set
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Brilliant
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From a macro perspective, Crawford's book provides an overview of the change in the nature of work that has occurred over the past 120 years or so, since the advent of industrialization and the assembly line. He overlays this with his own life experiences as a man who always enjoyed working with his hands, but fell (like me and many others) for the academic lie that knowledge work is superior to more concrete work like a physical trade.
The two biggest things I got out of this book are both Crawford's personal journey and lessons he learned transitioning from a knowledge job (copyediting/writing?) to a physical trade/small business owner (motorcycle repair), as well as the background to how America (and the world) went from guilds of craftsmen with lifelong experience, standards and knowledge of the physical world to those who give up all experiential knowledge to become cogs in a factory line. This transition from overall broad knowledge gained from making mistakes in the physical world to one where all employees are "generalists" with only the knowledge to follow pre-fab directions is a great insight into the work of today and how it differs from the rest of human history, and why so many struggle to find meaning in their work.
The book is not long, but it doesn't waste your time either. You could also skip a couple of the chapters about opening his motorcycle shop, as they are mostly personal anecdote, but I found he was selective enough that most of the anecdotes serve a broader point about the nature of work or the value of struggle and mistake, so I didn't mind it.
Give this as a gift to every young man in your life who is being told he should go to college instead of a trade, or who isn't doing well in traditional school. I think it would benefit them a lot.
Great historical & personal perspective on work
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