“Absolutely fascinating...The breadth of the scholarship is breathtaking, but the prose is clear and sometimes leavened by dashes of dry wit...Lucassen’s own compassion shines through this magisterial book.”—Christina Patterson, The Guardian

“Whereas traditional histories often present drudges and slaves as anonymous extras in the dramas of luminaries, passive in the face of their unhappy fates, Mr Lucassen affords them attention and agency.”—Economist

“Readers...will find much to enjoy and fascinate on the level of brute historical fact if not on that of overarching theme.”—James Marriott, The Times ‘Book of the Week’

“Full of colour, surprise and human warmth...Exhausted yet enlightened, any reader reaching the end of Lucassen’s marathon will understand that the problem of work runs far deeper than politics, and that the grail of a fair society will only come nearer if we pay attention to real experiences, and resist the lure of utopias.”—Simon Ings, Daily Telegraph

“This is a huge book, spanning every continent and subjects as wide-ranging as hunter-gatherers, slavery and Zoom workers.”—Emma Jacobs, Financial Times

'An encyclopaedic and opinion-packed tour de force ranging over millennia. We may need to work to be useful, to give our lives meaning, to cooperate and for our self-esteem; but some ways of organizing work are so much fairer and more rewarding than others. A brilliant book.’—Danny Dorling, author of Slowdown
 

‘If being forced to work feels bad, it is nowhere near as bad as having no worthwhile work to do. Lucassen’s masterly book shows how the human need for fulfilment in shared tasks has confronted technological and social forces that pit us against each other in a struggle to appropriate the material rewards of work and the esteem that comes with it.’—Paul Seabright, author of The Company of Strangers

‘This magisterial study distils a life’s work to make sense of labour relations over millennia. Lucassen probes the degrees of freedom under which people have created meaning, sought cooperation and demanded fairness in households, plantations, workshops and factories across the globe.’—Eileen Boris, author of Making the Woman Worker

‘Lucassen brilliantly anchors world history in human agency through work. In every era, he finds the household as the backbone of work – the site of domestic labour and the source of social labour. Throughout, he illustrates the principles of meaning, cooperation and fairness in work. A memorable volume.’—Patrick Manning, author of A History of Humanity