The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind, Jan Lucassen's magnum opus, was published by Yale University Press on 27 July in the UK, and on 31 August in the US. The book is the result of Jan Lucassen's decades of research into the history of work
As IISH’s first Director of Research (1988-2000), as Senior Researcher (2000-2012) and Research Fellow (from 2012) Jan Lucassen is one of the foundational scholars of the global history of work and labour relations, the central focus of IISH’s research. In the first reviews the book already received various accolades: in The Economist, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The New Statesman. Already a number of podcasts have been published in which the author talks about his book, you can listen to the podcasts here and here. The BBC History Magazine’s Books of the Year selected The Story of Work as one of the 33 best books of 2021. A more recent review on Econlib describes the book as " a work of enormous richness of content and argument, which anyone interested in any aspect of life will find rewarding."
The Dutch edition of the book, De wereld aan het werk. Van prehistorie tot nu, was published by WBooks on Wednesday 6 October. The presentation of the book took place at the IISH with a panel discussion (in Dutch) with Ineke Sluiter (President KNAW), Agnes Jongerius (Europees Parlement, PvdA, via Zoom ), Janneke Plantenga (Utrecht University), Paul de Beer (University of Amsterdam) and Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University) discussing with the author a number of mains themes from the book.
