The Skimmer

Book Review: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work By Matthew B. Crawford Penguin; 320 pages

A funny thing happened on the way to the knowledge economy, writes Matthew Crawford: we somehow got stupider. Globalization and technology are doing to white collar jobs in the 21st century what the assembly line did to trades in the 20th--turning them into repetitive, menial, dissatisfying tasks. "Wherever the separation of thinking from doing has been achieved," he writes, "it has been responsible for the degradation of work." Crawford, a political-philosophy Ph.D. and motorcycle-shop owner, stresses the importance of the manual trades and...

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