num_pages: 336
description: Craftsmanship says Richard Sennett names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. The computer programmer the doctor the artist and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsmans work. In this thought-provoking book Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in todays world. The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skillfrom the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers nurses and doctors musicians glassblowers and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things. 
language: English
title: The Craftsman
publisher: Yale University Press