Book Reviews

• Author: John Nalbandian
• Published date: 01 March 2004
• Date: 01 March 2004
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X03254867
• Subject Matter: Reviews

bargaining, organizational communication, personnel law, strategic plan-

ning, reductions in force, and self-directed work teams. HRM Ethics is

thought provoking and shines a much-needed empirical light into a little-

researched area of personnel management.

—Brett S. Sharp

University of Central Oklahoma

BRETT S. SHARP is an assistant professor of political science and the associate directorof the

OklahomaPolicy Research Center at the Universityof Central Oklahoma. His previous positions

include serving as agency services coordinator for the Oklahoma Office of Personnel

Management.

Whyte, David. (2002). Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of

Identity.NewYork,NY:RiverheadBooks,272pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734371X03254867

I have remained in this new worldfor nearly 30 years. I am not the only man

to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there

are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten,

each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it

all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination. (Lahiri, 1999,

p. 198)

“Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity,” the subtitle of David Whyte’s Cross-

ing the Unknown Sea,is what intrigued and attracted me to his book. On the

dust cover one finds his definition of work: “work\werk\ n: an oppor tunity

for discovering and shaping; the place where the self meets the world.” Who

thinks of work in this way: The place where the self meets the world? I

looked up the definition of work in my Random House dictionary and

found as synonyms, labor,drudgery,andtoil. Whyte obviously takes poetic

license, but being a poet by trade, who can object?

According to Whyte, work presents unique opportunities for discover-

ing oneself. He asserts that failure to fully understand the opportunitiesin

workstemsfromthewaywecommonlydescribewhatwedo.Wechartour

progress at work in objective, measurable terms wheretitles and job descrip-

tions provide meaning. Wesay that work is work and life is life, and if work

becomes our life in contemporary culture, we become defensive, deficient,

and less the human being than we ought to be. For Whyte, work is life, just

as raising a family is life.

BOOK REVIEWS 79