Books by Matthew Crawford

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 aper us enlivened with humour . . . Important, memorable and enjoyable' The Times'Masterly' EconomistMatthew 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.

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.

Speed, risk, freedom... Driving is one of the last remaining activities available day-to-day in which we get the chance to take control of our destiny, feel that intense and primal connection between movement and sheer joy, and experience a whiff of actual danger - the kind of faith in the unknown that makes us feel alive.