From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual
Brian Sholis
From Head to Hand:
Art and the Manual
by David Levi Strauss
$24.95 List Price
The title of critic David Levi Strauss's new book, paired with his reputation for engaging political subjects, suggests From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual might be a fruitful addition to the recent spate of books that link craftsmanship to broader questions about economic worth. The best known of these are Richard Sennett's The Craftsman (2008) and Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009), both of which draw on a tradition of moral criticism, inaugurated by John Ruskin and William Morris, that protests capitalism's tendency to undervalue skilled labor. Being aesthetes, Sennett and Crawford pondered the special place of art in such an economy. Yet the opportunity to pick up where they left off isn't profited on, and this collection of twenty essays and conversations, all but two previously published,
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