Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreword / by Warren Bennis -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Hands to the grindstone -- Fettered lives -- Job creation -- The new religion of work -- The most important pile of bricks in the world -- Secrets of the dumb steeple -- The silent monitor -- The last puritan in a nation of amateurs -- The yellow dog unleashed -- The Philadelphia catechism -- Modern times -- Western Electric discovers motivation -- Unnatural selection -- Arbeit Macht Frei -- Whatever happened to Homer Sarasohn? -- Managing the corporate state -- The wanting animal -- Sharp-suited philanthropists -- The end of management -- Melting the frozen assets -- The road to Panama -- One life. Live it -- Age of the search engine -- Postscript: new century, new ethic.

"This sweeping survey of the history of work, from hunter-gatherers to dotcom telecommuters, deftly compresses thousands of years of human evolution into an incisive volume that the Toronto 'Globe & Mail' calls "a page turner of a book". It is a book about work, about the organization and management of work, but it is also a book about people"--