The 2023 book on the Luddite movement and their impact on society and culture. So of course I pre-ordered it. I even read another book on the topic during the full month it took for my copy to arrive in Japan. Aaaand, as you can guess given the 9 months between the release and this review and despite my expectations, I have mixed feelings about.

What is it about?

Same as Les Briseurs de Machines, Blood in the Machine explains the revolt of the Luddites at the beginning of the 19th century. Compared with that other book, Brian Merchant structured the book around the main protagonists of the revolt, switching between chapters in a structure which seems to match George RR Martin’s Song for Ice and Fire rather than an academic book.

From time to time, he includes elements from the current society and how the current work organisations rhymes with the pleas of the Luddites. He also includes chapters on how the revolt inspired authors (Mary Shelley) or popular culture overall. The last hundred pages address contemporary issues and how the emergence of the factory system in the 19th century find echoes our service sectors and tech work life as well as all declinations of gig works and mechanical turks.

Mixed feelings

As I have already said in some other reviews, I get lost when there are too many characters and points of view. That’s what led me to first drop the book after 200 pages. I got lost. I had no idea who was who and was supposed to do what.

But I wanted to finish reading this book and pushed through in the past 10 days. Another issue I had is that after these first 200 pages, having this very embodied recollection of the events started to feel gimmicky and I felt like Brian Merchant was trying to spreaaad events and chapters just to fit the structure he set at the start of his redaction. The whole section on the fall of the Luddites felt wrong to be and it was a pain to read.

Final word

It is a great work, accessible, not limiting itself to a cold list of dates and I truly things that’s a great angle to present this working class history.

Can only recommend, even with the comments I listed in the previous section.