Of Games, Gadgets, and God
Coeur d'Alene, ID. One evening our family and two cousins were playing Uno. It’s a simple game requiring nothing more than a deck of...
Lessons from a Motorcycle Mechanic
Wichita, KS
Let's pause a moment and be grateful that the job market for political theorists is so bad. Because if it wasn't, Matthew Crawford,...
Dirty Hands, Clean Mind
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. As I read Matt Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft, I thought often of Simone Weil, that young champion of the workers...
The Tacit Dimension of Shop Class
Kearneysville, WV. Whenever I pick up a book dealing with ways of knowing, I invariably flip to the index to see if the author...
Shop Class and the Romantic Mode of Politics
It goes without saying that Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft is compelling. Discussed on NPR, profiled in The New York Times and The...
The Whole Hog
Alexandria, VA They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can sometimes tell how the book’s designers wanted the book...
Recognition and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Matt Crawford is a good friend of mine, and I read and commented on early drafts of Shop Class as Soulcraft, and so I...
Working with Words
A few years ago I dated a guy who seemed terrific. Nate (not his real name) was cute, smart, funny, and athletic. Oh, and...
A Certified Deep Thinker
I don’t like machines. I find them dirty, confusing and, even worse, boring. I also don’t much enjoy working with my hands. I like...
Gumbo as Soul Craft
When I read “Shop Class As Soulcraft,” I initially felt like a twerp. I’m the guy who was raised in the country by a...