The Craftsman

Sennett, Richard

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0141022094 ISBN 13: 9780141022093

Casa editrice: Penguin, 2009

Provocative and enlightening, Richard Sennett's The Craftsman is an exploration of craftsmanship - the desire to do a job well for its own sake - as a template for living.

Most of us have to work. But is work just a means to an end? In trying to make a living, have we lost touch with the idea of making things well?

Pure competition, Sennett shows, will never produce good work. Instead, the values of the craftsman, whether in a Stradivari violin workshop or a modern laboratory, can enrich our lives and change the way we anchor ourselves in the world around us.

The past lives of crafts and craftsmen show us ways of working - using tools, acquiring skills, thinking about materials - which provide rewarding alternative ways for people to utilise their talents. We need to recognize this if motivations are to be understood and lives made as fulfilling as possible.

'Lively, engaging and pertinent ... a lifetime's learning has gone into the writing of this book'
  Roger Scruton, Sunday Times

'An enchanting writer with important things to say'
  Fiona MacCarthy, Guardian

'Enthralling ... Sennett is keen to reconnect thinking with making, to revive the simple pleasure in the everyday object and the useful task. There is something here for all of us'
  Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times

'A masterpiece'
  Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone and Respect. He was founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University and Academic Governor and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

L'autore:

Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone and Respect. He was founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University and Academic Governor and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has won the Amalfi and Ebert prizes for sociology and in 2006 was awarded the Hegel Prize by the City of Stuttgart.

Dalla quarta di copertina:

'A masterpiece' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Most of us have to work. But is work just a means to an end? In trying to make a living, have we lost touch with the idea of making things well?

In this provocative and enlightening book, Richard Sennett explores the idea of craftsmanship - the desire to do a job well for its own sake - as a template for living. Pure competition, he shows, will never produce good work. Instead, the values of the craftsman, whether in a Stradivari violin workshop or a modern laboratory, can enrich our lives and change the way we anchor ourselves in the world around us.

'Lively, engaging and pertinent ... a lifetime's learning has gone into the writing of this book' Roger Scruton, Sunday Times

'An enchanting writer with important things to say' Fiona MacCarthy, Guardian

'Enthralling ... Sennett is keen to reconnect thinking with making, to revive the simple pleasure in the everyday object and the useful task. There is something here for all of us' Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times

'A thoughtful and lovingly detailed assessment of what goes on when a person learns a craft ... he writes with perception and real feeling' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph