In 2009 Matthew B. Crawford published Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. His publisher calls him “a philosopher and mechanic.” Crawford had been executive director of a think tank in Washington. He quit after five months. He later opened Shockoe Moto, an independent motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia. The book became a bestseller.
The book questions “the educational imperative of turning everyone into a ‘knowledge worker.'” A Library Journal review of the book noted that shop class began to disappear from American schools in the 1990s, as educators prepared students for the “knowledge revolution.”