The Office: A Hardworking History

by Gideon Haigh

A comprehensive history of the office that references all popular culture, this book traces its origins from merchants and monks to the gleaming glass towers of New York and the space-age sweatshops of Silicon Valley. Finding an extraordinary legacy of invention and ingenuity—shaped by the telephone, the typewriter, the elevator, and e-mail among others—this account discovers a world teeming with dramas great and small. It also explores the array of archetypes, including the Whitehall mandarin, the Wall Street banker, the Dickensian clerk, the Japanese salaryman, the French bureaucrat, and the Soviet official. Far from simply being a place where people earn a living, the office emerges as a way of seeing the entire world.

Genres: Nonfiction

656 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Gideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh (born 29 December 1965) is an English-born Australian journalist, who writes about sport (especially cricket) and business. He was born in London, raised in Geelong, and now lives in Melbourne.

Haigh began his career as a journalist, writing on business for The Age newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over 70 newspapers and magazines,[2] both on business topics as well as on sport, mostly cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian during the 2006-07 Ashes series and has featured also in The Times and the Financial Times.

Haigh has authored 19 books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical works includes The Cricket War and Summer Game, his biographies The Big Ship (of Warwick Armstrong) and Mystery Spinner (of Jack Iverson), the latter pronounced The Cricket Society's "Book of the Year", short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times;[3] anthologies of his writings Ashes 2005 and Game for Anything, as well as Many a Slip, the humorous diary of a club cricket season, and The Vincibles, his story of the South Yarra Cricket Club, of which he is life member and perennate vice-president and for whose newsletter he has written about cricket the longest. He has also published several books on business-related topics, such as The Battle for BHP, Asbestos House (which dilates the James Hardie asbestos controversy) and Bad Company, an examination of the CEO phenomenon. He mostly publishes with Aurum Press.

Haigh was appointed editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia for 1999–2000 and 2000–01. Since March 2006, he has been a regular panellist on the ABC television sports panel show Offsiders. He was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne until near the end of 2006.

Haigh has been known to be critical of what he regards as the deification of Sir Donald Bradman and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy".[4] He did so in a September 1998 article in Wisden Cricket Monthly, entitled "Sir Donald Brandname". Haigh has been critical of Bradman's biographer Roland Perry, writing in The Australian that Perry's biography was guilty of "glossing over or ignoring anything to Bradman's discredit".[4]

Haigh won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2006[5] for his essay "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid",[6] which was published in The Monthly magazine. He asserted that the quality of discourse could suffer as a source of information's worth is judged by Google according to its previous degree of exposure to the status quo. He believes the pool of information available to those using Google as their sole avenue of inquiry is inevitably limited and possibly compromised due to covert commercial influences.

He blogged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer.[7]

On 24 October 2012 he addressed the tenth Bradman Oration in Melbourne.

Reviews

[Andrew Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well written book that chronicles the history of the office, the people in offices, the techniques used to improve office work, the buildings they were housed in and the social impacts and cultures within the Office.

This was a well researched , humours and insightful view of offices and office life.

[Cris · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I normally enjoy Mr Haigh's writing I found this book to be throughly uninteresting and when about a quarter of the way in i had to force myself to pick it up, I decided to return it to the Library forever grateful that the only thinks that I had wasted on it was my time.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and entertaining book about various aspects of the office over time.  Office buildings, office furnishings, office romance, hirings and firings, office work and non-work are all discussed, with plenty of references to novels, movies and television shows in which offices play a part.  I read this toward the end of an extended break from work; it's possible that my patience for 577 pages about offices may have waned before the end had I been experiencing office life at the same time as reading about it, but I think that I still would have enjoyed it, as it is written gracefully and with humour.  It is however also a bit of a brick, and not really suited to reading on transport to and from the office, if you are so inclined.  Because it discusses a range of topics, there is not a huge amount written on each one, but there are lots of references should anything in particular pique one's interest.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gideon was a guest at school recently and gave some great talks to our students. He's a really fine writer with a huge range of interest, and all of that range is shown here in this study of the office in all its aspects. I would perhaps have liked it to go into a bit more depth in places but the book is huge as it is. Beautifully designed as well.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book on the history of the office. Looks a the physical and experiential side of a place which has become central to many of our lives. Lots of fascinating and funny moments. In many ways like a scholarly version of Dilbert.

[Jeannie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a general introduction to the history of management administration, office architecture and the social impact of the post-industrial age etc. Inevitably, such a broad range of topics can only be dealt with at an introductory level.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough. Read every page. Interesting, well researched, well written.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A interesting look with a lot on literature, film, etc. The architecture bit was a bit dry for my liking. A solid analysis of the social and technological impacts wrought by the office.