The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew B. Crawford
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Reads like an undergraduate research paper under the review of a post-modernist philosopher.
The book has one wonderful chapter on the business and craft of repairing, building pipe organs.
The the remainder of the book is treating a narrow slice of academic life, lectures, cafeteria, gymnasium, and social media as if they are the essence of modern culture.

An important distinction that he overlooks is the difference between culture and nature. He treats to idea of resentful surrendering to the person of a ruler, authority, the same as surrendering to a fact of nature. He claims that "people" (I wonder whom he is referring to?) resent surrendering to the facts of nature as an extension of the ideas of learning to think for themselves. He considers independent thinking to be a dismissal of thinkers of the past, but independent thinking is coming to understand what other thinkers say, not ignorance of them, (except maybe August Comte who reportedly thought he would not bother to study Aristotle and invent all of philosophy on his own).

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