Book club

Note: I have been trying to get soem reading done on this break. Here is a short review of The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers and Inventors who make American Great by Alec Foege. More reviews posted from time to time...

"The Tinkerers" raises an interesting question - what do you expect when you sit down to read a book (as opposed to a magazine article or newspaper feature). Foege was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and senior writer at People and it shows in this under-researched book about a fascinating idea. When he's writing profile pieces - as in chapters on Dean Kamen and Gever Tulley - he's entertaining and pleasantly readable. But when he tries to write about the historical sweep of the topic, his weak storytelling skills get in the way. The chapter contrasting Washington and Franklin and setting them up as paradigms of American tinkering is so meandering as to be pointless.

But more disappointingly, the book suffers from the common sins of the genre of business literature - it's fixation on validating an idea or term (in this case, tinkering) prevents and serious, critical examination of that idea. A quick review of the notes cofirms that Foege got most of his information from business journalism, Wired magazine, the New York TImes and the New Yorker. This explains why is book reads like a second-hand analysis of ideas that have been discussed in these magazines and newspapers.


So what should one expect from a book rather than a magazine article or newspaper feature? A book can go into greater depth and engage more complex sources than these other forms, and I think readers are right to expect such depth and criticality from books. We've seen some very thoughtful writing like that in the last few years, from authors like Glenn Adamson and Richard Sennett (on crafts) and Matthew Crawford (on how changes in the education have affected ideas about work). Sadly, "the Tinkerers" reads like something you'd read on a long flight - a largely superficial attempt to identify a new trend that is principally about trying to stake out that new trend, not thoughtfully analyze it. It's something someone will mention in a meeting or when griping about the state of education in the 21st century, but there's no 'there' there.

Working in a space between

When I don't really know what to do in the studio, I find something to keep my hands busy. Since I started working at Tyler, that something has often been bookbinding. I have been working my way through Kojiro Ikegami's Japanese Bookbinding and have picked up a couple of new tricks...

These will probably end up as sketchbooks for a trip with the boys to the museum, but they are kind of fun to make and pretty simple. A few dozen more and I'll have the hang it and might be able to make a few tweaks...

After Thomas Edison (Mary had a little lamb...), gouache on paper

I have finished one more in the small series of Famous First Words that began a few weeks ago. This is what Thomas Edison first recorded when demonstrating the phonograph in 1877 (here's audio from the Internet Archive of Edison reflecting on that famous recording in 1927)

I've been reading Alec Foege's disappointing book The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers and Inventors who made America Great (a full review of its disappointing-ness will wait for a future post). Foege retells the story of Edison's inability to fully understand the potential of his invention. Intent on seeing it marketed as a tool for business, Edison never foresaw the transformative impact the phonograph would have on music and entertainment.

I am currently working in a somewhat scatter shot manner as I try to get some very complex pieces lined up. It feels a little like wasting time, but I am thinking of Edison as I do it, of the idea that what you make may have some impact beyond what you imagine, and that helps a little.

Gever Tulley on 5 dangerous things for kids | Video on TED.com

We're liking this one...I hope to get up the nerve to do these things with my kids.