Bunch of Amateurs : Inside America's Hidden World of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Job Creators (Paperback)

from Jaylia3

In this entertaining and wide ranging book journalist Jack Hitt explores what it is to be an amateur and why it has been a quintessentially American pursuit since the time of Ben Franklin, a man Hitt sees as a sort of founding father of amateurism. The word amateur came into English from the Fren...

from le.vert.galant

This is that staple of modern publishing: the non-fiction book built around narrative articles written forward popular magazines. But Jack Hitt proves to be a deeper observer and shrewder critic than the average journalist. He knows how language can manipulate and sees as clearly through the jarg...

from Ronrose1

Some small parts of this book caught my interest, but larger parts did not. The chapters on Benjamin Franklin were quite fascinating and very informative. Other chapters were overly long. Wading through the chapter describing the search for the possibly extinct ivory-billed woodpecker left me wan...

from rivkat

Let's get this out of the way: Hitt does almost nothing to suggest that American amateurism is different from anyone else's amateurism, though he does say it's part of our self-image. (The quality of his evidence includes this century-hopping comparison of fictional archetypes: "The mad scientist...

from Jaylia3

In this entertaining and wide ranging book journalist Jack Hitt explores what it is to be an amateur and why it has been a quintessentially American pursuit since the time of Ben Franklin, a man Hitt sees as a sort of founding father of amateurism. The word amateur came into English from the Fren...