by Alec Foege ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2013
Mostly laudatory history mixed with a provocative treatise on creating neat new things.
A celebratory exploration of American tinkerers and the spirit of innovation that moves them.
Thomas Edison may be the most famous tinkerer of all, but as former Rolling Stone and People contributor Foege (Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio, 2008, etc.) points out in this lucid meditation on innovation, invention alone is a far different thing from tinkering. Tinkerers grab things that already exist and find clever ways of making them better or putting them to uses never before imagined. To illustrate his point, the author looks at great American tinkerers and finds that the compulsion to tweak existing technologies in unique and exciting ways is a hallmark of the American experience. Tinkering today, however, does have its challenges. For one thing, technology is a lot more complex than it was in Benjamin Franklin’s day. Most people simply do not have the technical knowledge necessary to access the computerized world of virtual tinkering that predominates much of modern-day engineering. That wasn't the case in the past, when "gear heads" had far more tangible materials with which to work. Then there's the problem of the corporate state. Foege finds that it is choking truly creative inspiration in favor of immediate financial gains, and he effectively argues that real tinkerers need their own space and the freedom to fail. Coming up short is how tinkerers ultimately succeed. However, tinkering alone isn't a virtue; there's a dark side as well. In addition to Edison, readers also learn about the not-so-great men (and women) found tinkering in places like the military industrial complex and financial services industry - and how they almost brought the nation to its knees with their harebrained ideas. Still, tinkering remains a force to be reckoned with in the 21st century.
Mostly laudatory history mixed with a provocative treatise on creating neat new things.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-00923-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
by Alec Foege
by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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