Let me start by saying that I do think this is a book worth reading in some regards (or perhaps someone can recommend a better book that expresses similar ideas), although the rest of this review is largely going to focus on how bad it was. There are some interesting ideas here, even if Crawford often draws the wrong conclusions from them, and I do recommend reading it, despite the low rating. I'm about as confused about this book as Crawford is about his politics.

The opening few chapters of this book immediately made me think it would become one of my favorites. I think a lot about work and the value of trades, and Crawford is clearly smarter than I am and introduced me to several new ideas that I'd never quite made the leap to before. But it really goes down hill from there. I remember writing something shortly before I dropped out of school to take a job in the software development industry about how college wasn't for everyone and we shouldn't put so much weight on a useless degree and should have more apprenticeships, etc. In retrospect, my writing came of as desperately trying to defend my decision. While I still think it was the right decision, the writing on it was defensive and whiny enough to ruin any potentially good arguments I might have had for my position. Despite the fact that I was an undergraduate who wasn't very good at writing and Crawford is a PhD who's excellent at it, periodically (but not frequently, thank goodness) this book read like my early-20's anti-college essay. Crawford loves to whine about how he was kicked out of academia for being too edgy (he conveniently doesn't repeat the "joke" that raised the ire of his "harpy" compatriots. Clearly, he couldn't possibly be the one at fault!), even though there were apparently no consequences for him whatsoever and he immediately secured himself a lucrative job at a conservative think tank. Perhaps Mama's Special Boy didn't get invited to his colleagues cocktail parties as often as he'd like and is still in a snit over it all these years later. Although, it should be said that, to his credit, he did eventually leave his think-tank position because they were pushing climate denial-ism. Although even that is somewhat ruined by him making a big deal about only earning $20 an hour as a motorcycle mechanic after leaving his lucrative job, but not mentioning royalties, the years of savings that put him in a comfortable position, his various other columns and research fellowships, etc. Wait, how did this book go from philosophy to a personal biography trying to justify his life choices again? Unclear. Let's move on.

Even setting aside the right-wing victim complex, the casual sexism and racism sprinkled throughout, makes reading this a tough sell. That said, I do think many of his observations on skill and craft are worth reading, even if his right-libertarian conclusions are wrong. Maybe I should be praising him for having nuanced positions instead of sticking dogmatically to his preferred political ideology, but the conclusions he draws that lead him to end the book by disavowing conservatism (this was nice, I suppose) and advocating for "progressive-republicanism" (it is unclear to me how this made any sense in his mind, or what this had to do with the rest of the book or the value of work) just feel like cognitive dissonance when every other position he takes should have led him to unions and socialism, if he were being honest with himself. Maybe I'm just too much of a lefty ideologue to accept his brilliant and nuanced positions.

On a lighter note: there were motorcycles. I liked the motorcycles.