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Michelle Malkin

Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs Hardcover – May 19, 2015

by Michelle Malkin (Author)

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Firebrand conservative columnist, commentator, Internet entrepreneur, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin tells the fascinating, little-known stories of the inventors who have contributed to American exceptionalism and technological progress.

In July 2012, President Obama infamously proclaimed: “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Malkin wholeheartedly disagrees. Who Built That is a rousing tribute to the hidden American capitalists who pioneered everyday inventions. They’re the little big things we take for granted: bottle caps and glassware, tissue paper, flashlights, railroad signals, bridge cables, revolutionary plastics, and more.

Malkin takes readers on an eclectic journey of American capitalism, from the colonial period to the Industrial Age to the present, spotlighting awe-inspiring and little-known “tinkerpreneurs” who achieved their dreams of doing well by doing good. You’ll learn how famous patent holders Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain championed the nation’s unique system of intellectual property rights; how glass manufacturing mavericks Edward Libbey and Mike Owens defied naysayers to revolutionize food, beverage, and pharmaceutical packaging; how penniless Croatian immigrant Anthony Maglica started his $400 million Maglite flashlight business in a rented garage; and many more riveting stories that explain our country’s fertile climate for scientific advancement and entrepreneurship.

To understand who we are as people, we need to first understand what motivates America’s ordinary and extraordinary makers and risk-takers. Driven by her own experience as a second-generation beneficiary of the American Dream, Malkin skillfully and passionately rebuts collectivist orthodoxy to celebrate the engineers, mechanics, designers, artisans, and relentless tinkerers of all backgrounds who embody our nation’s spirit of self-made entrepreneurialism.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mercury Ink
Publication date

May 19, 2015
Dimensions

6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

9781476784946
ISBN-13

978-1476784946
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michelle Malkin is a mother, wife, blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, pundit, and #1 New York Times bestselling author. She started her newspaper journalism career at the Los Angeles Daily News in 1992, moved to The Seattle Times in 1995, and has been penning nationally syndicated newspaper columns for Creators Syndicate since 1999. She is the founder of Hot Air and Twitchy.com. She lives with her husband and two children in the Colorado Springs area.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1476784949
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mercury Ink (May 19, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781476784946
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476784946
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #734,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #311 in Nationalism (Books)
- #1,144 in Company Business Profiles (Books)
- #1,383 in Scientist Biographies

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306 ratings

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Michelle Malkin

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Michelle Malkin is a mother, wife, blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, longtime cable TV news commentator, and best-selling author of seven books. She is host of "Sovereign Nation" on Newsmax TV. She started her newspaper journalism career at the Los Angeles Daily News in 1992, moved to the Seattle Times in 1995, and has been penning nationally syndicated newspaper columns for Creators Syndicate since 1999. She is founder of conservative Internet start-ups Hot Air and Twitchy.com. Malkin has received numerous awards for her investigative journalism, including the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) national award for outstanding service for the cause of governmental ethics and leadership (1998), the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award for Investigative Journalism (2006), the Heritage Foundation and Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity's Breitbart Award for Excellence in Journalism (2013), the Center for Immigration Studies' Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration Award (2016), and the Manhattan Film Festival's Film Heals Award (2018). Married for 26 years and the mother of two children, she lives with her family in Colorado. Follow her at michellemalkin.com.

Customer reviews

5 star		82%
4 star		10%
3 star		6%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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k scott

and striking in both their honesty and impact With so few people actually understanding that Our collection of Sovereign STATES

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

Purchased this product as a gift for a child. They have not reported back to me their feedback.
It was purchased because of the talent and voice of the Author Michelle Malkin.
I read her blog / posts regularly and find them both accurate; probing; enlightening; and striking in both their honesty and impact
With so few people actually understanding that Our collection of Sovereign STATES created a REPUBLIC that was NEVER intended to operate like the nations of the world who follow after having Kings; dictators and tyrants all evolving directly from or highly influenced by Socialism--
That reality gives a clear understanding why our nation cannot survive the very same corruption and poison -- our founders rejected -- and every real patriot since that time has written; spoken; worked; fought; bled and died to preserve -- Freedom; Justice under the morals and laws and freedoms (inalienable rights) from God -- identified; and protected by our Constitution. This understanding is appreciated and valued by this fine young lady Michelle Malkin-- in every way -- an ideal example of the value of the Single Individual of our "Constitutional Republic" aka "Our Free Nation"
The Hope (that no one notices or opposes) and the Change (to destroy Freedom and institute slavery under Socialism) that is the "Hope and Change" that Mr. Barry Soetoro (using the fake name of Obama) used as his "cunning words" to deceive the American public.
Our nation is founded and can only survive on the Single Individual - and the Personal Rights of EACH Single Person--
That is the Foundation of WHO BUILD THAT-- our nation; our businesses; our families; and our prosperity of the once greatest nation on earth.
And that foundation; principle; and ideal is the anathema Socialism-- which treats people as cattle; as wheat to be sifted by Tyrants.
There is "no" personal freedoms; no personal property; no personal choice under Socialism and its full manifestation "Communism". I lived in a Socialist nation for years-- I know. And this fine lady- Michelle Malkin knows full well WHO BUILD our nation-- and it was not Socialists.
Nearly every corrupt feature; destructive policy; vile practice and obstructive and abusive bureaucracy can be traced to Socialist people and ideas.
I thank our God-- for Michelle and the single individual Shining Lights -- that know Truth and are not Ashamed of Standing up for our nations' true strength-- I hope you all consider supporting her and others that follow her excellent example!

One person found this helpful

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Brian H. Fiedler

Better editing would have been a wise investment

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

I will give 5 stars for conception and 3 stars for execution.

Execution:

Even though the intention of the book is to focus on the human story rather than engineering principles, the book needs more and better diagrams, with captions. The author was an English major, as evidenced by occasional flubs such as on page 205: "Three miles of bare copper wire on thirty-foot-long poles carried three thousand volts of power". References to dollar amounts from centuries ago need to be normalized to salaries and cost of living, the so-called "adjusted for inflation". The book has 59 pages references and the depth of research is admirable throughout the book, but I would trade the reference list for better engineering editing.

Conception:

I agree that such a book is a needed antidote to a curriculum such as A.P. U.S. History, which is apparently largely constrained by people who are baffled by technology and business. Young people in particular certainly need to know more about wealth creation, with more stories about bottle caps as an alternative to the more familiar story of Zuckerberg and Facebook. I would welcome a Fox video series based on this book. Perhaps it could be as successful as the recent Cosmos.

I have no evidence that President Obama would not also find these stories to be awe-inspiring. Some readers may find the book's overt adversarial stance against Obama's remarks to be unnecessary. Histories like these certainly can be widely popularized, and can stand on their own merit and Malkin's inspired research. A more casual reference to Obama's remarks would have worked for me, but given the cross-hairs drawn on the author, it is completely understandable the she would take this opportunity to fight back.

2 people found this helpful

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Bobby33x

No Mr. Obama! It was built by CAPITALISM!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

As Obama said to entrepreneurs: "You didn't build that..." , speaking of their businesses. This statement more than any other the President has made on economics shows what an arrogant NITWIT he really is. This from a guy whose biggest claim to fame in history will be that he was the first Black President AND THAT'S IT - what a minstrel!
Michelle Malkin's book shows the LIE that Obama told when he made his IDIOTIC, class-warfare remark. She tells the stories of a number of inventions, we today take for granted, such as the cork-lined bottle cape, that made for the preservation of a number of food & beverage items we take for granted today. She also writes about how a number of these entrepreneurs were connected to each other, such as King Gillette & the bottle top guy.
But my favorite story from the book belongs to Willis Carrier and the introduction of Air Conditioning to the masses. I believe its two greatest effect were on Hollywood - people flocked to air-conditioned movie theaters as a way of escaping the summer's heat AND humidity - and also, the impact air conditioning had on the great migration (still ongoing) from the NE & Mid-West to the SE and the SW.
Ms Malkin reminds us that none of this would have happened as quickly as it did w/out CAPITALISM.
This is both an enlightening and inspiring book - A MUST READ.

3 people found this helpful

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Mark Sutter

Inspirational Stories

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 28, 2015

Verified Purchase

Let me start my review with the only complaint I had about the book. Malkin invents a new word -- tinkerpreneur -- to replace the word inventor. She uses the word in the book's title and she uses it incessantly throughout the book to the point of tedium. Every time I came across the word I wished she had simply used the word inventor instead. Yeah, it's a nitpick on my part but it was annoying.

The book is filled with interesting stories of people who invented products on their own, without the help of government. All of these stories go to great lengths to refute Obama's claim that "If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." I found the book to be fun to read, interesting, and educational. For that, it was well worth the time I spent on the book.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

O. G. M. Morgan

Paean to Invention

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 17, 2015

Verified Purchase

Although this book is clearly aimed at an American readership, it deserves to be read more widely. Michelle Malkin uses a series of cases to demonstrate how, through a combination of genius, supremely hard work and consideration for their fellow human-beings, entrepreneurs have monumentally improved the lot of society, not just in the United States, but all over the world. All the inventions she discusses were made in the US, but quickly made their way across the Atlantic and the Pacific, not merely for perfectly good commercial reasons, but because they improved the quality of life and greatly benefited other businesses.

Some of the entrepreneurs had received extensive formal education, others barely any. Some were born into wealthy families, many more into impoverished ones. A lot of the inventions were deceptively simple, but, in every case, the innovation transformed lives and businesses. Good examples are the cases of William Painter, creator of the crimped bottle-top, and of Edward Libbey and William Owens, who, between them, revolutionised the bottle-making industry. When the latter pair combined their ability to make strong, standardised glassware with Painter's new designs for bottle-tops, drinks could be produced more quickly, bottled more hygienically, transported further, preserved longer and drunk by more people than ever before.

Most of the entrepreneurs acquired considerable wealth through their long endeavours and did so by putting their inventions in the hands of as many people as possible, by being able to sell them at prices which more and more people could afford. Michelle Malkin draws a very sharp distinction between these free market capitalists, on the one hand, and "crony capitalists", for whom she displays withering contempt, on the other. An example of a "crony capitalist" cited is JP Morgan, who backed Edison against Westinghouse in the so-called "War of the [electrical] Currents", when Edison used some decidedly underhand means to try to impose his preferred direct current, to the disadvantage of the alternating current system invented by Nikola Tesla and developed by Westinghouse. Morgan achieved the rare feat of stabbing both Edison and Westinghouse in the back and, of course, he made plenty of money in the process, but, unlike Tesla and Malkin's other entrepreneurs, who ramped up patents in astonishing numbers, Morgan made precious little else.

Michelle Malkin has some stern comments on the subject of the contemporary state of patent law in the United States. She believes that recent changes to the law, through the America Invents Act, deliberately militated against the small-scale inventor, in favour of big corporations with legions of lawyers attached. Malkin contrasts the inventor who painstakingly perfects his or her invention before seeking to patent it, with the corporate behemoth which files a much less precisely worded patent, often with no intention of ever turning it into a finished product, but solely with a view to deterring competition. Many patents in nineteenth century America, she points out, were submitted as working models, precisely because the inventors lacked the literary skills to express their ideas satisfactorily on paper. For these patent applications to be successful, as so many were, these models had to be able to show that the idea was both original and workable.

Alongside the crony capitalists and their corporate lawyers, Michelle Malkin takes aim consistently at one contemporary target: President Obama. The clue is in her title: "Who Built That"? This is a reference to Obama's notorious electioneering sneer, when he had the effrontery to tell entrepreneurs who had succeeded in creating thriving businesses and personal fortunes, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Throughout the book, Malkin subtly alludes to Obama's crass belief that statist government, not individual effort, is the true stimulant behind a decent standard of living and a strong economy. She also observes his hypocrisy in condemning entrepreneurs for being supposedly too rich, while he almost incessantly jets off in Air Force One to attend fund-raisers with crony capitalist billionaires.

Although the book does have a definite message, it is certainly not just a polemic. Malkin writes very well and her book is highly informative.

There are lots of notes, but they aren't numbered. I can't quite see the point of that, since numbers which link directly to notes (and then directly back again) are ideally suited to the Kindle. Here, the notes do link back to the text, but the text itself contains no indication as to which sections are annotated. Apart from the occasional typo, e.g. Emily Roebling's dates, quoted incorrectly from the Brooklyn Bridge plaque, that's my only complaint and it does not justify begrudging a star.

2 people found this helpful