Customer Reviews

Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation

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I heard Sennett on the BBC radio recently 'in dialogue' about this book. He practices what he preaches (and suggests) in an admirable fashion. This book is a great service to 21st-century society. He has begun the task of a restoration of a sense of nobility and value in the often-discredited notions of 'humanism', 'community' and 'collective.' Sennett's book is a nuanced antidote to narrow, selfish, acquisitive individualism. His book will appeal to academic non-specialist readers alike.

I've long admired Montaigne's mature blog-like essays and find in them a mercurial pre-modernity that our post-modernity could learn much from. Sennett sent me back to read them again with fresh insight and renewed optimism.

The perceptive and distinguished Mr Sennett has harnessed a variety and range of otherwise fragmented topics into an appealing new ethics and practice of co-operation. This book marks a valued addition to an ongoing project to rethink life, arts/crafts and creativity.

For British readers I would also add a recommendation for Henry Hemming's Together: How Small Groups Achieve Big Things.

For those who have read "The Craftsman", Richard Sennet needs no introduction. Even tough he does not provide us with another masterpiece, Sennet presents here the deep roots of our potencialities and difficulties to collaborate with one another. For those who try to go deeper in determining if collaboration in organizations will have its way in the future, it is necessary to read this book

A fascinating discussion of the forces destroying social cohesion in western cultures, slowly spreading across the globe with increased materialism and globalisation of employment.

Analysis of the strategies to overcome the social isolation and how to work "together" provides a starting point for any reader concerned with what has been misleadingly called "The Big Society", at a time of considerable constraint on funding and attack of "social welfare".

great book, thought provoking in a very original way. everyone should read and think about how to make the world we live a better place by cooperating in a genuine way.