Makers: All Kinds of People Making Amazing Things in Their Backyard, Basement or Garage

Bob Parks is a Vermont based free lance writer, well known among those who tinker with interesting mechanical, electrical,and other machine-like things. In Makers, Parks goes deep within that world to learn about and describe some of the best, and in my own opinion, most clever machines that individual makers have built. His world of "Makers" is a big, exciting, and nuanced sort of place. Best of all, I think Parks understands what makes these folks tick, and brings that out well through excellent prose and helpful diagrams.

Around the world there's an underground of citizen engineers hard at work making their own cameras, weapons, medical equipment, computers, and more in their garages, backyards, and homes - and their worlds come to life in both interviews and color photos in MAKERS: ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE MAKING AMAZING THINGS IN GARAGES, BASEMENTS AND BACKYARDS. From a farmer in Montana who modified a hay baler to break up derelict homes on his property to a Seattle apprentice electrician who has developed a fascinating Tesla washtub coil, these are lively portraits of inventors at work.

This book is a collection of one or two page stories about people who create things, the Makers, as it were. And the stories about the people, and what they make, are fascinating and inspirational. Garage handiwork is back (though it really never left), and this book shows how is chic to be geek.

This book is full of stuff that I'd love to build myself. Its just great to see what people make for themselves. Inspiring, great to flip through. Makers and geeks will be chuckling in excitement.

Tools and I usually don't get along real well. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the skill of those who can make something out of seemingly nothing... Makers: All Kinds of People Making Amazing Things In Garages, Basements, and Backyards by Bob Parks. A beautiful book that salutes the sometimes off-beat inventor we'd probably all like to be... Parks has taken 91 "makers", those who have invented and created things out of the ordinary, and given them a short one to two page write-up on their invention, their story, and their motivation as to what makes them tick. In many cases, it's a matter of making a gadget out of trashed treasures that someone else threw out. Take Greg Miller, for instance, who built his own night vision scope from discarded parts and $39. Or you have the group of hackers who built an electronic lock-picking machine out of obsolete and castoff computer parts... cost $0. But there are also the serious inventors who devote large amounts of time, energy, and money to pursuing their dreams. Like Tom Chudleigh who has built a spherical wooden treehouse that took him two years and well over $10ooo. Or Hans-Joerg Krohn who missed being able to fly all the time before he was transferred to a job in Kazakhstan. To satisfy that urge, he spent over $12000 and 10 years building a full-scale flight simulator with multiple computers and customized instrument panels. While the back of the simulator looks like a Rube Goldberg device, the seating canopy looks like a professional trainer. An incredible feat of engineering... O'Reilly has done a superb job with this "coffee table" book. After the success of their Make magazine, it's not surprising that they would publish something like this. What is unusual is the quality and beauty of the volume. Heavy paper stock, full color pictures, and a stylistic look that kept me turning the pages and marveling at how creative people could be. This isn't a "how to" book, so if you're intending to buy something as a tutorial on building things, look elsewhere. But if you want to be inspired by human ingenuity and creativity, this book will definitely fit the bill...