Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character Kindle Edition

Looking at the reviews already written, I do fear my negative review will be rated poorly solely for being a negative review. But I do take my responsibility as a reviewer seriously, and I was just disappointed by reading this book which started out with so much promise. Please read my comments and be objective.

The premise is that the American culture favors the amateur over the professional, and over the course of US history, the amateur has often been the one to prove the professionals wrong. Hitt tells the story of the distrust between Franklin and Adams, the story of amateur ornithologists investigating an extinct woodpecker, amateur DNA hackers, amateur astronomers (including Dobson), and more. Each story had the promise of telling a compelling story, but unfortunately, the narrative of the book fell flat.

The chapter on Franklin and Adams opened the book, and was by far the most interesting and compelling. I love reading about history, and always enjoy a retelling of how Franklin hammed up his "frontiersman" persona while in France. Adams is the straight-laced diplomat who can't understand why nobody likes him and Franklin gets all of the attention. Hitt does a great job telling this story.

Unfortunately, the next chapter on amateur ornithologists just dragged on for too long and was near impossible to follow. An extinct bird is discovered in a swamp, but many think the experts are so invested in the story they refuse to admit they are wrong. As the author tells the tale, he vacillates between blaming the Bush administration, the Cornell University ornithology department, the general bias of experts, the desire of the public for a good story---he never seems to find a villain or explain his thinking. At some point, I started flipping to find out when the bird story would be over and it just kept going on and on. The author clearly has a chip on his shoulder regarding George Bush, but he never quite explained what was so nefarious about the Bush administration believing the experts at Cornell regarding this bird. Indeed, he returns in other chapters to using George Bush whenever he needs an example of something stupid or bad. It just seemed repetitive and out of place, no matter what your political views.

Other chapters had interesting tidbits - there is an analysis of the difference between robotics in the US, Europe, and Japan. US robots are practical for specific tasks with the resemblance to humans completely unimportant (think Roomba) whereas Japanese robots are designed to look as human as possible. European robots are designed to think like humans to the point that Europeans are busy thinking about law for sentient robots (marriage, rights, etc).

If this review sounds random, it's because the book is random. There is no cohesive theme. There were some interesting factoids, but I also found some glaring mistakes and errors in the book. When I went to find out how he made such errors, I discovered no footnotes or endnotes. Since I found things I know to be mistaken, it makes me question the whole book.

I feel there might be a good book in here somewhere, but it needs a strong editor for flow and fact-checker. Hitt needs to decide his theme and stick to it - the book meanders and while it had some interesting moments, I wouldn't recommend it.

When you write a unified field theory, it is imperative that your readers accept the proposition that the field is very large; and since the field is the largest tossed salad / melting pot in modern world history, America, the readers cannot be disappointed if the muqaddimah isn't comprehensive. But Hitt's ideas are grand, the examples varied, and the synthesis of the language of contemporary American cultural artifacts with the search for the ever elusive historical truth so compelling, anyone who comes away from this wonderful read with anything short of the realization that he just had the mother of all homework assignments dumped in his lap is missing the point and must take the course again. The lesson I have always appreciated in Hitt's writing and radio work, and in person (we knew each other in college), is his fearless insistence that the essential humanity of the speaker and the listener in any conversation cannot be removed from the equation no matter how strong their compulsion to create the illusion of intellectual purity. (The observer is always part of the observation.) When Franklin struck through Jefferson's reference to Locke ("life, liberty and property") and enlivened the text to read "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I think he challenging us all to take advantage of the liberty embedded in American's founding political principles and be playfully creative. Then, when we're each called in from our unique version of mud pie-making, wash the big pieces off, and sit down at the table together, we'll each have our own yarn to spin at the table, each as fascinating as the next. ("...the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse." Dead Poets Society) A fine book. Inspiring. And motivating.

I am very interested in the idea of amateurism. What motivates people to do things (often significantly costly things in terms of time and energy) for love rather than money? What motivates us to spend significant amounts of our free time doing things (mastering the art of bird identification, writing complex software, etc) that most others would find as either an eccentric waste of time, or worth doing only for compensation? (I am a user of Linux, a computer operating system whose software is almost exclusively made and funded by dedicated volunteers, which intensifies my interest in amateurism.)

As such, I was really curious about this book - an examination of amateurs in America, why they do what they do, why they are more important than we often suppose. Unfortunately, I can only give the book two stars, largely because the author's chapters are quite rambling and the book has a very unfocused and not-at-all cohesive feel. Chapter 1 starts with a historical story of John Adams (the quintessential professional) and Ben Franklin (the quintessential amateur), and how Franklin, more than Adams, captured the American (and French) heart and mind. The next chapter, though, is a blow-by-blow of the author's experience with highly expert amateur bird watchers involved in an academic controversey over the proper identification of a particular rare bird. And while there is some talk of what keeps these amateurs motivated, and why they serve as a valuable check to the academic ornithology community, most of the discussion gets sidetracked by some really not-quite-interesting (to me!) details of the actual controversy. Later chapters have a similar feel: profiling a group of amateurs and the authors experience talking to them (from robot designers to tinkerers in matters of DNA extraction). The problem is that the author does so much description of what these amateurs do that the theme of amateurism-in-general gets thoroughly lost.

Maybe this is a case of me wanting a book that the author just didn't write. I wanted a book focusing on what exactly makes the amateur tick, and why amateurs stay motivated to engage in costly (in time and money) activity strictly for the fun of it (where others might opt to get paid or work for profit). Maybe the author only set out to profile his experiences with various amateurs, not really bringing it all together into this larger theme. If what you are looking for is the latter - vignettes of an authors experience with amateurs of all stripes - then read this book. If you are more interested in the history, psychology, or a general reflection on amateurism in general, this book will likely not hold your attention; it didn't really hold mine.

[This review, of course, brought to you by an amateur.]