Ken Myers at Mars Hill Audio Journal introduced me to Matthew Crawford, calling Shop Class as Soulcraft a hymn to the virtues of what he [Crawford] called manual competence and a lament for the decline of honor accorded to work with one’s hands.
My husband, a former high school shop teacher, captivated from the first page — in which Crawford bemoans the disappearance of shop classes from our common education — insistently interrupted my reading to read aloud a paragraph. Thus, he convinced me to read it myself.
Crawford has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago, but when he’s not writing he makes a living as a motorcycle mechanic. (While this is a rare combination, I know several carpenters who are conversant with Kierkegaard and Heidegger. My husband Curt (see photo below) can wield an ax, weld an axle and read Wendell Berry.)
Crawford’s book is part social history, part philosophy, and part memoir. The altitude of some of the metaphysical musings were beyond my reach but within stretching distance. The history of transition from craftsmanship to assembly line and the degradation of blue collar work was absorbing. His personal ‘education of a gearhead’ was fun and fascinating reading.
Crawford laughs at the cubicle culture with teambuilding activities and speech codes. He urges learning a trade even if you go to college. Reading this book inspires me to pick up a shovel and dig in my garden.
If thinking is bound up with action, then the task of getting an adequate grasp on the world, intellectually, depends on our doing stuff in it. And in fact this is the case: to really know shoelaces, you have to tie shoes.
(how does a world-class violinist get into a book on crew?), Louis Zamperini of 
fame, and Hugh Laurie. Yeah, that Hugh Laurie! If you loved Unbroken, odds are you will like The Boys in the Boat.
A Living Pencil 