Oxford Book of Work

Book Overview

Primal curse or sacred duty? Painful drudgery or the only sure route to human happiness? Work has always evoked conflicting reactions. Yet whether we view it as a tedious necessity or embrace it as a compulsive addiction, it remains an inescapable and endlessly fascinating part of the human condition.
To illuminate the changing experience of work, this deeply enjoyable anthology draws upon more than 500 writers from classical antiquity to modern times: poets, dramatists and novelists; theologians, economists and philosophers; social investigators and journalists; diarists, letter-writers and autobiographies. Charles Aickens, Adam Smith, Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, Karl Marx, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Henry Ford, John Steinbeck, Primo Levi, Upton Sinclair, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Frost, Tom Wolfe, Harriot Martineau, Louisa Alcott, and Dorthy Parker are among the diverse and distinguished authors included in this volume.
While Keith Thomas explores many different forms of work--from ploughing a field to sailing the sea, from mining for coal to writing a poem, and from keeping shop to practicing medicine--he does not forget housework, schoolwork, and other forms of unpaid labor. All human life is here: young people starting work, the multitudes seeking employment, the old coping with retirement, and utopians seeking to eliminate work altogether. The delights of occupation and the harshness of compulsory labor are contrasted with the pleasures of rest and idleness.
Keith Thomas's magisterial compilation and scintillating introductory essay show that work does not just provide us with the means of subsistence; it also makes possible all the pleasures and acievements of civilization. The publication date for The Oxford Book of Work is Labor Day--September 6, 1999.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192142178
• ISBN13: 9780192142177
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 656 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Book on Work

Book is anthology on work. It documents nature of work and form of work expressed in the form of poetry,quotations and extracts.On one side, work is considered as a divine activity which brings happiness and on other side, it is a labour, drudgery and is done only for the purpose of renumeration.Work is considered as the distinguishing human attribute.Some theorist say that the habit of purposive labour that had developed mankind's essential attributes and led to the distinction between human beings and animals. Those who did not work would regress in to the animal state.In 12th & 13th centuries, European theologians gave work a more positive status stressing its social and moral beliefs.For puritans in England and America, work was praisworthy because St. Paul had said that those who did not work should not eat,because work fostered a spirit of renunciation and was good for character and made people healthier.According to David Hume,18th century,'every enjoyment,soon becomes insipid and distasteful,when not acquired by fatique and industry.'According to Adam Smith, "every man was naturally an idler, it was axiomatic that human beings preferred leisure to work,labour meant 'toil and trouble'it was undertaken only for the sake of renumeration."Book also covers kinds of work like women work,occupation,land work,sea work,head work,finance,artist,writers ect.Work is attributed by D.H.Lawrence 'there is no point in work unless it absorbs you like an absorbing game.'

In Loving Toil

The Oxford Book of Work is a very interesting collection of quotations, aphorisms and excerpts from mostly Western, mostly English writers on the topic of work. It reads in part like a breviary for Sunday School readings on the virtues of industry and vices of sloth, and yet has at least enough representation from Marx, Engels and Lawrence to let the reader know that for all the vaunted ruddy values of labour one isn't supposed to enjoy it after all. It's hard to know whether the Editor is Tory or Labour, however, one suspects the former due to the lack of Labour Law contributions. It could be argued that these omissions are due to the focus on classical texts, and not considering these fine laws to be worthy of inclusion in an Oxford gold gilded blue hard bound edition, well, it could leave an impression. One gets a mental picture of the editor struggling, nay, toiling with sweaty brows, ploughing the topsoil of old crusty CD roms in an Oxford vault somewhere in search of quotes on exertion. No doubt this, and a love for this painful topic, accounts for the rather redemptive view of work the book presents. Had all been drear whence the book itself? Lo! Mankind's strivings for sustenance, the ant-like mandibals digging in the maw of Earth and all for nothing! -No! better the black and blue of Oxford and Textile Workers! Get Up! The Caller Calls, Get UP you Nihilists! For your dignity is scratched in golden gild! Do not strike against Stalin in the Heavens, but camp on this toilsome factory lawn and spin your destiny well! -Eden's Reviewer