Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World [Hardcover]

Mark Frauenfelder (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 27, 2010

From his unique vantage point as editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine, the hub of the newly invigorated do-it-yourself movement, Mark Frauenfelder takes readers on an inspiring and surprising tour of the vibrant world of DIY. The Internet has brought together large communities of people who share ideas, tips, and blueprints for making everything from unmanned aerial vehicles to pedal- powered iPhone chargers to an automatic cat feeder jury-rigged from a VCR.

DIY is a direct reflection of our basic human desire to invent and improve, long suppressed by the availability of cheap, mass-produced products that have drowned us in bland convenience and cultivated our most wasteful habits.

Frauenfelder spent a year trying a variety of offbeat projects such as keeping chickens and bees, tricking out his espresso machine, whittling wooden spoons, making guitars out of cigar boxes, and doing citizen science with his daughters in the garage. His whole family found that DIY helped them take control of their lives, offering a path that was simple, direct, and clear. Working with their hands and minds helped them feel more engaged with the world around them.

Frauenfelder also reveals how DIY is changing our culture for the better. He profiles fascinating "alpha makers" leading various DIY movements and grills them for their best tips and insights.

Beginning his journey with hands as smooth as those of a typical geek, Frauenfelder offers a unique perspective on how earning a few calluses can be far more rewarding and satisfying than another trip to the mall.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this overwrought ode to doing it yourself, Make magazine editor Frauenfelder attempts to forge a deeper connection and a more rewarding sense of involvement with the world by making more of the things his family uses and eats. His DIY projects are varied—organic gardening, building a chicken coop, constructing cigar-box guitars, keeping bees, tutoring his daughter—and not uniformly successful: chickens get devoured by a coyote; the bees subsist on sugar-water handouts; his daughter fails the big math test. (Not to worry, he insists, since accepting mistakes is foundational to the DIY ethos.) Frauenfelder's hand-making procedurals are engaging, but, for him, practicality takes a back seat to spirituality, to living authentically, to grokking the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, the beauty found in an object's imperfections. He often presents DIY as a form of therapy: spoon-whittling isn't about spoons, it's about the calming and focusing effect of spoon-whittling. (And like most therapies, these projects often require lots of disposable income—a thousand dollars for a load of mulch!—and spare time.) People have hobbies because they are interesting and fun; by inflating hobbyism into a belief system, Frauenfelder doesn't add much to their appeal. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"This is a must-read book. Mark has lovingly and candidly documented the complex, myriad, intangible and often very tangible rewards of grabbing the world with both of your hands, and learning how it works."
- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

"What Mark Frauenfelder knows is that making a ukulele out of a cigar box is not just fun (and finally a good use for your thousands of old cigar boxes), it's a way of restringing and retuning your whole life. Buy this book, read it, and then maybe make it into a clarinet. I bet you can!"
- John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require

"Why do otherwise well-adjusted people take to raising chickens in Studio City? What sort of contrarian spends a lot of time and money to kill his own lawn? These may be the projects of one quirky individual, but they point to something universal and true. Human beings find their proper home not in large-scale corporate structures but in the struggle for individual agency. You have to admire the doggedness with which the individuals in Made By Hand try to render their own world intelligible."
- Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft

"Frauenfelder has been at the center of the emerging maker movement, chronicling its rise as an economic force. Here, he describes a parallel evolution: his own embrace of making, as he applies the lessons he's been learning to his own life. It's as inspiring as it is entertaining. You'll never look at your lawn the same again!"
- Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine

"Made By Hand is a wonderful, thought-provoking, and timely book that shows us why and how we need to take back control of our lives. Now if only Mark Frauenfelder would put out a version written by hand on paper he made from the trees in his backyard."
- A.J. Jacobs, author of The Guinea Pig Diaries and The Year of Living Biblically

"Made by Hand is an absurdist essay on 'resistentialism,' defined as 'the theory that things have a secret agenda to make us miserable by fighting back against our efforts to use them.' It is the flip-side of self-sufficiency and independence-an example of the ongoing war between HAP (hire a pro) and DIY. Do you give in to the unassailable fact that you have no idea how things work, or do you embark on a quixotic (but potentially enlightening) attempt to figure it out?"
- Errol Morris, Academy Award-winning director of Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

"Frauenfelder believes - as do I - that the DIY ethic is only partly about the things you produce. It's also about learning how to learn, about connecting with others who share your interests, and about taking pride in your accomplishments. ... I think the book is great, and I encourage you to pick up a copy if you're at all interested in DIY."
-J.D. Roth, Get Rich Slowly

"Made By Hand is a wonderfully inspiring read and makes turning to a make-centric way of life feel not only approachable, but utopian."
-Jaymi Heimbuch, TreeHugger.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; First Printing edition (May 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591843324
• ISBN-13: 978-1591843320
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #668,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a writer and illustrator living in Los Angeles. I am the editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine (http://makezine.com) I co-founded bOING bOING magazine, and was the founding editor-in-chief of Wired Online. I write a monthly column for Playboy called 'Living Online,' and was the co-editor of The Happy Mutant Handbook (Putnam-Berkley, 1995). Find out more about me at http://boingboing.net

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Failing gracefully, by hand, and living a better life May 27, 2010

By Seth Godin

Format:Hardcover

This book is approachable, fun, funny and gentle. Mark is a great writer, an inveterate tinkerer and one of the most important voices of the post-industrial age, but at the same time he's not afraid to tell you how often he screws up.

This book is also subversive, because his Tom Sawyer tales of handmade adventure will cajole you into abandoning some of your insulation and actually going out and making something.

I loved it. And now my PID outfitted espresso maker (I did it myself) is even better than it was.

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars DIY for beginners May 27, 2010

By Mark Crane

Format:Hardcover

I've been interested in DIY culture for most of my life and love Make magazine as well as the O'Reilly "Hacks" series. Like the author, I think I inherited these tendencies from my father, while growing up in California. I have a brother whose own experience has closely paralleled that of the author.

Mark Frauenfelder's "Made by Hand" gives his readers permission to make mistakes while exploring the world of DIY (Do It Yourself, as opposed to HAP, or Hire a Pro) culture. A resident of Tarzana then Studio City, both suburbs of Los Angeles, he would seem like an unlikely choice for urban hillbilly. Frauenfelder's claims to fame include starting the popular blog "Boing Boing." and appearing in the first Errol Morris Apple commercial.

This is one of those recently popularized "experience" books, in which the author sets out to try something different, like living strictly according to the Old Testament or eating nothing but cheese for a year. Frauenfelder begins the book by describing a desire to escape urban malaise by moving to Raratonga, and quickly discovers the difference between being a tourist and a resident of a community. From that experience he discovered that his favorite part of the journey was "coconut day," when he would extract coconut meat with his daughters and cook it into scones or other goodies.

Upon his return to what passes for "civilization," Frauenfelder embarks on a 1.5 year program to emulate coconut day by slowing his life down through a series of DIY projects, including killing his front lawn, growing his own food, modding his high-end espresso machine, raising chickens, fermenting Kombucha, yogurt and sauerkraut, making musical instruments, raising bees and ultimately learning how to learn. Oh, and carving wooden spoons.... I didn't think I could ever care about carving hardwood spoons, but by the end of the chapter I was ready to give it a shot.

The book is an extended invitation to become a physical hacker in the best sense (it saddens me that this term has been coopted by the press to mean "malicious computer intruder.") The preferred term is now "maker," which has more positive connotations but reminds me a little of Orson Scott Card's magical realism set in the nineteenth century. Accomplished tinkerers and hackers may not find anything new in here, as his descriptions of each adventure are more like extended blog entries that point to additional resources and provide profiles of some fascinating Makers, including William Gurstelle, author of "Backyard Ballistics" and other invitations to enjoyable danger, Forrest Mims, the author of the popular Radio Shack eletronics manuals, and the secretive Mr. Jalopy, car hacker extraordinaire. Each DIY luminary provides insights that slowly accrete, leaving us with a useful philosophy of Making stuff by the time we are done.

Frauenfelder ruminates on how consumer culture has infantilized us in order to sell us toilet paper and diapers. As an antidote, he provides examples of how to carve out time to engage in these projects (by abandoning television and working in small bursts, sometimes 20 minutes a day. I was disappointed to read that he had temporarily forsaken painting and drawing).

The best parts of the book for me were Frauenfelder's accounts of his own frequent mistakes. Often DIY texts are written by intimidating mechanical geniuses. Frauenfelder, on the other hand, messes up all the time while his wife, Carla, looks on disapprovingly. Sometimes the mistakes just don't matter, and sometimes they serve as a precursor to something serendipitously better, like a black widow-free yard (thanks to the chickens), amplified cigar box guitars or a PID-enhanced espresso machine.

The message of the book is that mistakes are part of learning, and that if you're not making mistakes then you've payed someone else to make them for you, and deprived yourself of something important in the process. Made by Hand is a good introduction to the DIY scene and will probably inspire you to try something yourself. If you are looking for detailed instructions for various projects, you're probably better off with back issues of Make magazine or contacting some of the fascinating people he profiles in this book, but if you're looking for inspiration, this is a good first stop on the road to Maker enlightenment.

An earlier reviewer complains that many of Mark's adventures are enabled by a healthy disposable income. Although at times I cringed at his willingness to buy solutions online (a $24.95 wood gouge, etc.) more often than not the author points out how he could have saved money by using an alternative, and provides plenty of examples of scrounging through wood piles and parts bins for cheap solutions. I also enjoyed the pop philosophy in the book, and didn't think that Mark was trying to elevate hobbies to the level of religion. It's unfortunate that, in our highly fragmented and specialized post-fordist world we even have to justify a foray into experimentation and eclecticism, but I found the theorizing enjoyable and useful, especially the sections on the origins of advertising, learning and unschooling.

This book is not so much about the specifics of each project as it is about giving you the permission and attitudes to be a Maker, especially if you're new to hacking your world.

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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars If you've ever done anything for yourself before, find another book. December 18, 2011

By Devan M DePauw

Format:Hardcover

If, however, you've never in your life had to be personally competent and you think it might be a lark to throw a bunch of money at half baked DIY projects, then by all means give this book a whirl. To be clear, though, you will find almost no instruction or valuable reflection.

I don't think I've ever written a review on Amazon before, though I'm a hefty consumer of mostly non-fiction books. I don't enjoy being negative, either, as I feel that any earnest attempt at something is at least a little bit honorable. Truth be told, I did learn something in this book; there are a few pages about a man named Edward Bernays who is the originator of psychological based marketing in the early 20th century that I found very interesting. Beyond that, this book ought to have been condensed by 70% and turned into a passable pamphlet.

This guy and his wife made money hand-over-fist during the dot com boom by being freelance writers. When the bubble popped, they found themselves with some vague sense of emptiness that couldn't be filled by their paid-off mortgage, sizable nest egg, or espresso so they logically decided to move to a small island in the middle of the Pacific where they'd vacationed for a short period a number of years prior. They sold the house during the grossly inflated real estate bubble and packed up only a big van load of the most important things to them. This included 13 pairs of shoes for his wife and an espresso machine worth as much as a used car. This well-thought-out plan turned sour when they were struck with the epiphany that it's difficult raising children without the support structure of friends + family and that living on a small Pacific Island isn't all up-side.

After 4.5 months they admit defeat and fly all of their stuff back home.... I should have stopped reading here but I figured this could just be the back story of having the author's naive eyes opened to the reality of life. It wasn't. This guy just does whatever he wants like a child with no real responsibility. He wants to be a DIY guy ("Maker" is the hip term, by the way) so he throws a bunch of money and very little forethought at it and his final conclusion is that he's become a Maker and he's inspiring others now. Wanna build a garden in your front lawn? Don't bother doing all the research that the people who know what they're doing tell you you need. Just go drop a grand on mulch and take a week to spread it out. You've got nothing better to do with a week, right?

I don't want to start ranting like mad. Frauenfelder wants you to know that it's okay to fail. It's true. People are too worried about failing. Screwing stuff up is the best way to learn how to avoid screwing stuff up. Go out, start tinkering, break a few things, be humbly proud of your successes and try to show those around you the value of doing things for yourself. You don't need to read his self-indulgent musings to learn this.

If you want to read a poorly constructed, meandering personal journal of how a rich guy with more cash and time than sense and patience justifies calling himself a "Maker" then look no further than this book.

If you want a very well thought out and researched dissertation on the very real personal value of being intimately involved with the Things in your life, then please purchase Matthew B. Crawford's "Shop Class as Soulcraft". Crawford's book is a tremendous value at almost any price, though right now it's $10.20 brand new.

Good luck and have a great day! Read more ›

34 of 39 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning (if you can afford it) October 2, 2010

By Bee Guy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you're looking for an earthy, back to nature, WalMart sucks kind of book for people who want to live simpler, less extravagant lives, free from the trappings of rampant consumerism, you might be disappointed. The book seems less about DIY and more about how you can waste a lot of time and money continually botching projects, requiring endless trips to Home Depot. It also gets off on the wrong start from the very first page, which describes Mark and his family moving to the remote tropical island of Rarotonga in the South Pacific; this seems to have a similar message as Eat, Pray, Love - spiritual enlightenment can be yours, but only if you can afford it. This pricey philosophy continues soon after with a chapter on how you can mod your $2000 espresso machine for only a few hundred dollars more - ah, the joys of knowing that you can afford the time and money for the perfect shot of caffeine. Further chapters involve gardening, which was charming enough; beekeeping, which was less so; and raising chickens, which I found rather sad in that his incompetence led to the deaths of several of his - and his daughter's - beloved birds. And finally, taken as a whole, there seems to be no grand philosophical message that you could take with you after reading this book; it just seems like a random collection of things that many of us do routinely every weekend. If you're interested in DIY, find something that interests you, and go find some books that would actually help you to, for example, carve wood, raise chickens, or build cigar box guitars. In the end, you'll find your own personal spiritual reward without having to read about someone else's muddled journey through DIY.