Download or read book Shop Class as Soulcraft written by Matthew B. Crawford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands “This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving.” —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman Called “the sleeper hit of the publishing season” by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers 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.
Download or read book Why We Drive written by Matthew B. Crawford and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and defiant celebration of driving as a unique pathway of human freedom, by "one of the most influential thinkers of our time" (Sunday Times) "Why We Drive weaves philosophers, thinkers, and scientific research with shade-tree mechanics and racers to defend our right to independence, making the case that freedom of motion is essential to who we are as a species. ... We hope you'll read it." —Road & Track Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy “self-driving” future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? Why We Drive reveals that much more may be at stake than we might think. Ten years ago, in the New York Times-bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, philosopher-mechanic Matthew B. Crawford—a University of Chicago PhD who owned his own motorcycle shop—made a revolutionary case for manual labor, one that ran headlong against the pretentions of white-collar office work. Now, using driving as a window through which to view the broader changes wrought by technology on all aspects of contemporary life, Crawford investigates the driver’s seat as one of the few remaining domains of skill, exploration, play—and freedom. Blending philosophy and hands-on storytelling, Crawford grounds the narrative in his own experience in the garage and behind the wheel, recounting his decade-long restoration of a vintage Volkswagen as well as his journeys to thriving automotive subcultures across the country. Crawford leads us on an irreverent but deeply considered inquiry into the power of faceless bureaucracies, the importance of questioning mindless rules, and the battle for democratic self-determination against the surveillance capitalists. A meditation on the competence of ordinary people, Why We Drive explores the genius of our everyday practices on the road, the rewards of “folk engineering,” and the existential value of occasionally being scared shitless. Witty and ingenious throughout, Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the irrepressible human spirit.
Download or read book The World Beyond Your Head written by Matthew B. Crawford and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking new book from the bestselling author of Shop Class as Soulcraft In his bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self. Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology, and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the coming to fruition of certain assumptions at the root of Western culture that are profoundly at odds with human nature. The World Beyond Your Head makes sense of an astonishing array of common experience, from the frustrations of airport security to the rise of the hipster. With implications for the way we raise our children, the design of public spaces, and democracy itself, this is a book of urgent relevance to contemporary life.
Download or read book The Boatbuilder written by Daniel Gumbiner and published by McSweeney's. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 28 years old, Eli "Berg" Koenigsberg has never encountered a challenge he couldn't push through, until a head injury leaves him with lingering headaches and a weakness for opiates. Berg moves to a remote Northern California town, seeking space and time to recover, but soon finds himself breaking into homes in search of pills. Addled by addiction and chronic pain, Berg meets Alejandro, a reclusive, master boatbuilder, and begins to see a path forward. Alejandro offers Berg honest labor, but more than this, he offers him a new approach to his suffering, a template for survival amid intense pain. Nurtured by his friendship with Alejandro and aided, too, by the comradeship of many in Talinas, Berg begins to return to himself. Written in gleaming prose, this is a story about resilience, community, and what it takes to win back your soul.
Download or read book Why We Make Things and Why it Matters written by Peter Korn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we make things? Why do we choose the emotionally and physically demanding work of bringing new objects into the world with creativity and skill? Why does it matter that we make things well? What is the nature of work? And what is the nature of a good life? This January, whether you're honing your craft or turning your hand to a new skill, discover the true value in what it means to be a craftsman in a mass-produced world. Part memoir, part polemic, part philosophical reflection, this is a book about the process of creation. For woodworker Peter Korn, the challenging work of bringing something new and meaningful into the world through one's own efforts is exactly what generates authenticity, meaning, and fulfilment, for which many of us yearn. This is not a 'how-to' book in any sense, Korn wants to get at the 'why' of craft in particular, and the satisfaction of creative work in general, to understand its essential nature. How does the making of objects shape our identities? How do the products of creative work inform society? In short, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves? Korn draws on four decades of hands-on experience to answer these questions eloquently in this heartfelt, personal and revealing book. 'If you are in the building trade or just love creating things as a hobby, you will find this book fascinating' The Sun
Download or read book The Case for Working with Your Hands written by Matthew Crawford and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some jobs offer fulfilment while others leave us frustrated? Why do we so often think of our working selves as separate from our 'true' selves? Over the course of the twentieth century, we have separated mental work from manual labour, replacing the workshop with either the office cubicle or the factory line. In this inspiring and persuasive book, Matthew Crawford explores the dangers of this false distinction and presents instead the case for working with your hands. He brings to life the immense psychological and intellectual satisfactions of making and fixing things, explores the moral benefits of a technical education and, at a time when jobs are increasingly being outsourced over the internet, argues that the skilled manual trades may be one of the few sure paths to a good living. Drawing on the work of our greatest thinkers, from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Karl Marx to Iris Murdoch, as well as on his own experiences as an electrician and motorcycle mechanic, Crawford delivers a radical, timely and extremely enjoyable re-evaluation of our attitudes to work.
Download or read book A Fan s Notes written by Frederick Exley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1988-08-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fictional memoir, the first of an autobiographical trilogy, traces a self professed failure's nightmarish decent into the underside of American life and his resurrection to the wisdom that emerges from despair.
Download or read book Eyes on Math written by Marian Small and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2015-04-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book is an exciting follow-up to the authors’ bestsellers on differentiated math instruction, Good Questions and More Good Questions. Eyes on Math is a unique teaching resource that provides engaging, full-color graphics and pictures with text showing teachers how to use each image to stimulate mathematical teaching conversations around key K–8 concepts. Teachers using the book can download the images for projection onto classroom white boards or screens. The questions and answers will help both students and teachers look more deeply and see the math behind the math! For each of more than 120 visuals, the text identifies the key math concept and the Common Core State Standard being addressed and then provides teachers with: Mathematical background and context.Questions to use with students to lead the instructional conversation.Expected answers and explanations of why each question is important.Follow-up extensions to solidify and assess student understanding. This book will be useful to a broad range of teachers who will find new ways to clarify concepts that students find difficult. It can be used as a resource to prepare teachers for the higher mathematical thinking requirements of the CCSS Mathematical Practices. It will also be an invaluable resource for teachers working with students with low reading ability, including English language learners and special education students. “This book provides a way for both teachers and students to get used to talking about mathematics in nonthreatening, open-ended ways. The author’s friendly explanations of the mathematical ideas the pictures are intended to surface give teachers who are less confident about the conceptual aspects of mathematics the support they need to facilitate less-scripted mathematical discourse with their students.” —Lucy West, education consultant Praise for Good Questions and More Good Questions! “A must for any educator who is serious about reaching more students more often and achieving more positive results.” —Resources for the Mathematics Educator “A valuable book for mathematics teachers, teacher educators, and faculty involved in differentiated instruction.” —Choice “A great resource.” —Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School “I highly recommend this user-friendly resource for all mathematics teachers.” —Teaching Children Mathematics
Download or read book A Craftsman s Legacy written by Eric Gorges and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book for makers, for seekers of all kinds, an exhilarating look into the heart and soul of artisans—and how their collective wisdom can inspire us all. "Despite our technological advances, we’re busier than ever, our lives more frazzled. That’s why the handmade object, created with care and detail, embodying a history and a tradition, is enormously powerful. It can cut through so much and speak in ways that we don’t often hear, or that we’ve forgotten." —Eric Gorges, from A Craftsman’s Legacy In this joyful celebration of skilled craftsmen, Eric Gorges, a corporate-refugee-turned-metal-shaper, taps into a growing hunger to get back to what’s real. Through visits with fellow artisans—calligraphers, potters, stone carvers, glassblowers, engravers, woodworkers, and more—many of whom he’s profiled for his popular television program, Gorges identifies values that are useful for all of us: taking time to slow down and enjoy the process, embracing failure, knowing when to stop and when to push through, and accepting that perfection is an illusion. Most of all, A Craftsman’s Legacy shows how all of us can embrace a more creative and authentic life and learn to focus on doing what we love.
Download or read book The Yugo written by Jason Vuic and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo was a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. By 2000, NPR's Car Talk declared it "the worst car of the millennium." And for most Americans that's where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand "good" communists, a willing U.S. State Department, the shortsighted Detroit auto industry, and improvident bankers, shake vigorously, and you've got The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History. Brilliantly re-creating the amazing confluence of events that produced the Yugo, Yugoslav expert Jason Vuic uproariously tells the story of the car that became an international joke: The American CEO who happens upon a Yugo right when his company needs to find a new import or go under. A State Department eager to aid Yugoslavia's nonaligned communist government. Zastava Automobiles, which overhauls its factory to produce an American-ready Yugo in six months. And a hole left by Detroit in the cheap subcompact market that creates a race to the bottom that leaves the Yugo . . . at the bottom.
Download or read book Three Strikes written by Stephen Franklin and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eloquently written book chronicles the massive, protracted strikes waged against three large corporations in Decatur, Illinois, in the 1990s. Veteran journalist Stephen Franklin shows how labor disputes at Bridgestone/ Firestone, Caterpillar, and A. E. Staley left lasting scars on this town and its citizens--and marked a turning point in American labor history. When workers went on strike to retain such basic rights as job security and the 8-hour day, the corporations hit back with unprecedented hard-line tactics. Through the moving stories of individual workers and union activists, Franklin illuminates the hardships and disillusionment left in the wake of the strikes, and the powerful forces that caught an unprepared labor leadership off guard. He vividly portrays how the balance of labor-management power was shifted by corporate globalization, cutthroat labor practices, the outdated responses of national unions and government regulators, and an apathetic public. Reflecting on the hard-won lessons of Decatur, the book describes how the quality of work and life are now threatened--not just for blue-collar workers, but for all Americans--and what it will take to safeguard them.
Download or read book Man of the House written by C. R. Wiley and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-03-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is your plan for the end of the world as we know it? How will you protect the people you love? What will you leave to them when you are gone? The good news is this is not the first time the world has ended. What's more, men were made for times like these. And the men of the past--the good ones, anyway--have left us a plan to follow. They built houses to last--houses that could weather a storm. This book contains their plan.
Download or read book Fire Season written by Philip Connors and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fire Season both evokes and honors the great hermit celebrants of nature, from Dillard to Kerouac to Thoreau—and I loved it.” —J.R. Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar “[Connors’s] adventures in radical solitude make for profoundly absorbing, restorative reading.” —Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air Phillip Connors is a major new voice in American nonfiction, and his remarkable debut, Fire Season, is destined to become a modern classic. An absorbing chronicle of the days and nights of one of the last fire lookouts in the American West, Fire Season is a marvel of a book, as rugged and soulful as Matthew Crawford’s bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, and it immediately places Connors in the august company of Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, and others in the respected fraternity of hard-boiled nature writers.
Download or read book The World Beyond Your Head written by Matthew Crawford and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Matthew Crawford, 'one of the most influential thinkers of our time' (Sunday Times), comes The World Beyond Your Head - a hugely ambitious manifesto on flourishing in the modern world. In this brilliant follow-up to The Case for Working with Your Hands, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. With ever-increasing demands on our attention, how do we focus on what's really important in our lives? Exploring the intense focus of ice-hockey players, the zoned-out behaviour of gambling addicts, and the inherited craft of building pipe organs, Crawford argues that our current crisis of attention is the result of long-held assumptions in Western culture and that in order to flourish, we need to establish meaningful connections with the world, the people around us and the historical moment we live in. Praise for The Case for Working With Your Hands: 'The best book I have read for ages . . . a profound exploration of modern education, work and capitalism' Telegraph 'Full of interesting stories and thought-provoking aperçus enlivened with humour . . . Important, memorable and enjoyable' The Times 'Masterly' Economist Matthew Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and served as a postdoctoral fellow on its Committee on Social Thought. Currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, he also runs Shockoe Moto, a motorcycle repair shop.
Download or read book My River Chronicles written by Jessica DuLong and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In every trial or tribulation, there is an opportunity that can bring us closer to God and to our goals when we allow God to take control. God, Take Over; I Am Finished is a cry for mercy and divine intervention when suffering seems unfair and you realize that no one else can help you. God, Take Over is based on the author's tribulations and triumphs during her wilderness experience as she struggled, willingly and sometimes unwillingly, to submit to God's will. It reveals how she passed through the storm and survived. Its principal message lies in the realization and fact that where human senses, strength, power, abilities, knowledge, and intelligence end, God's supremacy begins. By applying her experiences and the Word of God, Catherine Agada shows you how to discover divine strength in weakness; peace in chaos, and His love in suffering. She inspires and teaches you to love better, live happier, forgive faster, pray efficiently, and increase faith. God, Take Over; I Am Finished can restore hope and improve your relationships with God and man.
Download or read book Kamikaze Diaries written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives.” So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or tokkotai, who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II. This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II.
Download or read book My Times in Black and White written by Gerald M. Boyd and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An inspiring and riveting tale.” —Patrik Henry Bass, Senior Editor, Essence After a career of many firsts, journalist Gerald Boyd became the first black managing editor of the New York Times. But the dream ended abruptly with Boyd's forced resignation in the wake of scandal over Jayson Blair, a reporter who had plagiarized and fabricated news stories. A rare inside view of power and behind-the-scenes politics at the nation's premier newspaper, My Times in Black and White is the inspirational tale of a man who rose from urban poverty to the top of his field, struggling against whitedominated media, tearing down racial barriers, and all the while documenting the most extraordinary events of the latter twentieth century.
