For six years journalist Richard Donkin made the subject of work his own vocation, and in Blood, Sweat and Tears he places defining moments from its historical development into a cohesive and revealing perspective. Literally starting when humans first began perfecting recognisable employment skills, Donkin examines the critical touchstones that followed and the ways they fit together. Citing sources as disparate as The Dilbert Principle and Peter Drucker's The Future of Industrial Man, he addresses the impact of slavery, organised religion, the time clock, child labour, unionisation, the mid-20th-century workplace appropriations of the German and Japanese governments, women on the factory floor and in the boardroom and current management trends. While cautioning against the further interweaving of work into the "texture of our domestic existence", he notes that the transformation this is now driving is but the latest in an age-old process. "The concept of revolution", he concludes, "is wholly inadequate in describing the changes in the way we live and this thing we call work." --Howard Rothman