Triumphrat

neuroboy74 · 06-16-2009, 12:04 AM

has anyone checked this one out yet?

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Quote:

Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls “manual competence,” the ability to work with one’s hands. According to the author, our alienation from how our possessions are made and how they work takes many forms: the decline of shop class, the design of goods whose workings cannot be accessed by users (such as recent Mercedes models built without oil dipsticks) and the general disdain with which we regard the trades in our emerging “information economy.” Unlike today’s “knowledge worker,” whose work is often so abstract that standards of excellence cannot exist in many fields (consider corporate executives awarded bonuses as their companies sink into bankruptcy), the person who works with his or her hands submits to standards inherent in the work itself: the lights either turn on or they don’t, the toilet flushes or it doesn’t, the motorcycle roars or sputters. With wit and humor, the author deftly mixes the details of his own experience as a tradesman and then proprietor of a motorcycle repair shop with more philosophical considerations.
— Publishers Weekly, Starred review

it's on my shortlist. sounds like pirsig's book without the b.s.

kidtwist · 06-16-2009, 11:40 AM

I bought the book but haven't read it yet. The reviews looked good. It's on my stack of books to read.

Unlike Pirsig's book, it's a pretty thin. I don't know yet if that's good or bad.

Catenaccio · 06-16-2009, 07:59 PM

Maybe after I make a dent in my current reading list: Swann's Way, My Name is Red, and Massacre at Mountain Meadows.

Lee · 06-16-2009, 08:35 PM

I am waiting until I finish my latest book....Obama The clueless Years...it comes out in paperback and hard cover in three years six months and 15 days.

Nickwiz · 06-17-2009, 11:47 AM

Heres my current read.

cafecruzin · 06-17-2009, 12:32 PM

i hear there is a new book about the last 8 years called "never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

Sal Paradise · 06-18-2009, 08:15 AM

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Go.../9781416557067

I am half way through this book. Its amazingly detailed and authentic. I feel like I am riding around with the Barrow gang, its like watching a train wreck and yet I can't put it down.

I think anyone who rides will find this interesting.

Forget everything you think you know about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Previous books and films, including the brilliant 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, have emphasized the supposed glamour of America's most notorious criminal couple, thus contributing to ongoing mythology. The real story is completely different -- and far more fascinating.

In Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, bestselling author Jeff Guinn combines exhaustive research with surprising, newly discovered material to tell the real tale of two kids from a filthy Dallas slum who fell in love and then willingly traded their lives for a brief interlude of excitement and, more important, fame. Their timing could not have been better -- the Barrow Gang pulled its first heist in 1932 when most Americans, reeling from the Great Depression, were desperate for escapist entertainment. Thanks to newsreels, true crime magazines, and new-fangled wire services that transmitted scandalous photos of Bonnie smoking a cigar to every newspaper in the nation, the Barrow Gang members almost instantly became household names on a par with Charles Lindbergh, Jack Dempsey, and Babe Ruth. In the minds of the public, they were cool, calculating bandits who robbed banks and killed cops with equal impunity.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Clyde and Bonnie were perhaps the most inept crooks ever, and their two-year crime spree was as much a reign of error as it was of terror. Lacking the sophistication to plot robberies of big-city banks, the Barrow Gang preyed mostly on small mom-and-pop groceries and service stations. Even at that, they often came up empty-handed and were reduced to breaking into gum machines for meal money. Both were crippled, Clyde from cutting off two of his toes while in prison and Bonnie from a terrible car crash caused by Clyde's reckless driving. Constantly on the run from the law, they lived like animals, camping out in their latest stolen car, bathing in creeks, and dining on cans of cold beans and Vienna sausages. Yet theirs was a genuine love story. Their devotion to each other was as real as their overblown reputation as criminal masterminds was not.

Go Down Together has it all -- true romance, rebellion against authority, bullets flying, cars crashing, and, in the end, a dramatic death at the hands of a celebrity lawman hired to hunt them down. Thanks in great part to surviving Barrow and Parker family members and collectors of criminal memorabilia who provided Jeff Guinn with access to never-before-published material, we finally have the real story of Bonnie and Clyde and their troubled times, delivered with cinematic sweep and unprecedented insight by a masterful storyteller.