The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

Praise for "Shop Class as Soulcraft"

"Both impassioned and profound." --Christopher Shea, "The Washington Post

""Recent press coverage has sent word-of-mouth buzz on "Shop Class "through the roof, but it really is a book whose time, in our culture, has come." --Susan Salter Reynolds, " Los Angeles Times"

Praise for "Shop Class as Soulcraft"
"Both impassioned and profound." --Christopher Shea, "The Washington Post
""Recent press coverage has sent word-of-mouth buzz on "Shop Class "through the roof, but it really is a book whose time, in our culture, has come." --Susan Salter Reynolds, " Los Angeles Times"

Praise for "The World Beyond Your Head"--:

Praise for "Shop Class as Soulcraft"

The most cogent and incisive book of social criticism I've read in a long time. Reading it is like putting on a pair of perfectly suited prescription glasses after a long period of squinting one's way through life.--Damon Linker "The Week "

It's increasingly difficult to pay attention in the blooming, buzzing confusion of the modern world. Matthew Crawford argues persuasively that it's time to fight back . . . Rather than embracing the standard coffee-mug view of philosophy as a repository of sage aphorisms to be summoned while sipping warm beverages, Crawford respects past thinkers enough both to argue with them and to notice their legacies in diverse cultural strata. He clashes with Kant while considering children's cartoons; he sees an ideal from Kierkegaard lurking behind the generic Muzak at a university gym; he uses Hegel to diagnose the contradictions of New Age concepts of self-realization . . . Crawford offers a compelling general framework for the ethics of attention.--Nick Romeo "The Daily Beast "

Crawford is really part of a long-term philosophical workshop, all of whose apprentices have tried to find better terms for joining the world than what have been offered by their contemporary socioeconomic regimes. Ruskin and Dewey are part of the shop, as are William James and Jane Addams. I am confident they would happily offer whatever their equivalent would be of a vroom-vroom bike-engine sign of acknowledgment. Through philosophy and storytelling, Crawford has joined their project of loosening the grip of alienation and designed inhumanity. That's a job well done.--Michael Roth "The Chronicle of Higher Education "

Educators, politicians, urban planners, interior decorators, and many others would benefit from thinking carefully about the problem Crawford has identified . . . "The World Beyond Your Head" is an enormously rich book, a timely and important reflection on an increasingly important subject. Pay attention.--Ian Tuttle "The New Criterion "

Crawford's diagnosis of our scatterbrained ennui [is] on target, and ["The World Beyond Your Head"] is peppered with startling insights. One comes when he contrasts Mickey Mouse cartoons of decades past, in which contraptions invariably break down or assault their owners, to the contemporary universe of 'Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, ' where gadgets are error-free servants and faithful friends. It's the kind of technological utopianism that primes a young mind to buy whatever Silicon Valley is selling.--John Keilman "The Chicago Tribune "

In its exploration of how we come to know ourselves, "The World Beyond Your Head" harks back to vital debates between humanists like Joseph Wood Krutch and the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, as well as later works by the agrarian social critic Wendell Berry. Readers who know Robert Pirsig's classic "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" will also hear its engines purr in Crawford's work. Like Pirsig, he raises thrilling questions about human nature and calls for a more generous, more diverse definition of excellence.--Chris Tucker "The Dallas Morning News "

Matthew B. Crawford is a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a fabricator of components for custom motorcycles. His bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, which has been translated into nine languages, has prompted a wide rethinking of education and labor policies in the United States and Europe, leading The Sunday Times to call him "one of the most influential thinkers of our time."