Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

by Jack Hitt

WHAT IS IT THAT DRIVES THE SUCCESS OF AMERICA AND THE IDENTITY OF ITS PEOPLE? ACCLAIMED WRITER AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO THIS AMERICAN LIFE JACK HITT THINKS IT’S BECAUSE WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF AMATEURS.America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical garages—fiddling with everything from solar-powered cars to space elevators. In Bunch of Amateurs, Jack Hitt visits a number of different garages and has written a fascinating book that looks at America’s current batch of amateurs and their pursuits. From a tattooed young woman in the Bay Area trying to splice a fish’s glow-in-the-dark gene into common yogurt (all done in her kitchen using salad spinners)to a space fanatic on the brink of developing the next generation of telescopes from his mobile home, Hitt not only tells the stories of people in the grip of a passion but argues that America’s history is bound up in a cycle of amateur surges.Beginning with Ben Franklin’s kite and leading all the way to the current TV hit American Idol, Hitt argues that the nation’slove of self-invented obsessives has always driven the country to rediscover the true heart of the American dream. Amateur pursuits are typically lamented as a world that just passed until a Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg steps out of his garage (or dorm room) with the rare but crucial success story. In Bunch of Amateurs, Hitt argues that America is now poised to pioneer at another frontier that will lead, one more time, to the newest version of the American dream.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Audiobook, Cultural, American, Business

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Hitt was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where he attended the Porter-Gaud School. He got his start in journalism as editor of the "Paper Clip," the literary magazine of Porter-Gaud's first through fifth grades. According to his biography, he published "some of the finest haiku penned by well-off pre-teens in all of South Carolina's lowcountry".

Since 1996, Hitt has also been a contributing editor to This American Life. He contributed a story about a production of Peter Pan in an episode entitled “Fiasco”. Other pieces include his life growing up with one of the earliest transgendered women (“Dawn”), an hour long program on a group of prisoners in a maximum security prison putting on a production of Hamlet (“Act V”, #218), a segment on voter fraud in the 2008 American Presidential election ("Cold-cock The Vote.", #276), another episode about his life in a New York apartment building in which his superintendent turned out to be the head of a death squad in Brazil (“The Super”, #323) and more recently a segment on the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay called “Habeas Schmabeas” (#331) This last program earned him the Peabody Award in 2007.

Since 2007, Hitt has been one of two regular US correspondents on Nine to Noon, hosted by Kathryn Ryan on Radio New Zealand National. Jack is currently performing in a one man show he wrote called "Making Up The Truth" about his childhood and the outlandish characters he's met in his life.[3]

Was also a consultant in the movie "Hackers" regarding techniques of cyber crime of that day and age.

Reviews

[Kathrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For any reporter, there's a pleasure in delving into a specialty -- like telescope making. It's akin to traveling to a foreign country. The language is weird, the views are uncommon, but the company is always stimulating. The fun typically involves finding some way to carry back from this outpost of human endeavor a sense of the specialist's language that a non-telescope maker, even someone with no interest in astronomy, can enjoy as stories."
Anyone who reads a lot, especially someone unencumbered by genres, knows something of this fascination-- peering over the shoulders of people obsessed with a strange passion, getting off on not just the thing itself, but the singular passion, the desire to know and master, that exudes from the very pores of the obsessed. There is so much in this world to know, so much to explore, and here is someone who has picked just one thing, one arbitrary corner of the universe of knowing, and simply by spending the better part of their life playing with it (and I do mean playing, tinkering, experimenting for the glory of the thing and not the credentials that officialize it), help us see the awesomeness, the exceptional beauty, the potential of some tiny piece of something.

Jack Hitt is very good at finding these people and telling their stories, and simultaneously tells the American story, mad scientists, kooks, and amateurs all. And some of them aren't even all that kooky when you just sit down and listen.

He finds these characters in all diverse realms -- ornithology, astronomy, robotics, social sciences -- he even found a real-life girl with the dragon tattoo performing garage bioengineering. He could have continued through every discipline if he hadn't worn out his poor research assistants. And I stand in awe of all of them. How do you pick up a hobby like genetic mutations? Do you just run across some discarded DNA strands and get to work? I will never be that person, but I always hope that, through constant naive and enthusiastic exposure, I can encourage my kids to see themselves as potential amateurs in anything. You never know what will stick, right? What stuck with me is the high I get from other people's enthusiasms, people like Jack Hitt who recognize the extraordinary in every character he meets, and then writes so skillfully that I can know them, too.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The term 'amateur' signifies different things to different people, and in Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character , author Jack Hitt points out particular examples of that breed: people characterized by inquisitiveness, broad-mindedness and genuine self-confidence, and he illustrates how they have worked in such different fields of study in a cycle of innovation. He presents his case early in this, his newest book:

"It turns out that ignorance is bliss and, in many cases, a more productive perch to start from. Not knowing anything about something is often precisely what's needed to see something new. And then the cycle starts over."

Early on Hitt mentions those innovative garage dreamers familiar to us: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak; Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard; and of course Walt Disney. We meet lesser-known visionaries, such as pony-tailed John Dobson, who "breezily disses the Big Bang and mocks Stephen Hawking," and discover his unique innovative qualities. There's college dropout Jack Horner, a self-taught paleontologist who destroyed certain assumptions that had been accepted by dinosaur experts regarding the Tyrannosaurus Rex. And this book is jam-packed with similar of colorful characters, innovators all.



These are perfect examples of amateur innovators who didn't fit into the mold of conventional thinking, original thinkers who are able to see things that those rooted in established thought cannot. Hitt expresses that it's this sense of opportunity that's responsible for the inventive drive and entrepreneurial spirit of our country.

Hitt goes back to founding father Benjamin Franklin, devoting a chapter to the man who he recognizes as also being the founding father of our institution of home tinkering, and whose autobiography Hitt signifies as "an amazing piece of revisionist history." As his example of an amateur vs. a professional faceoff, the author uses Franklin's stodgy and by the book nemesis, John Adams. Both were in Paris in the late 1770s to gather support from the French in the Revolutionary War against Britain, and it was Franklin's amateur approach to diplomacy and international relations that made him the far more effective envoy.

Benjamin Franklin understood that the French were captivated by this huge upstart nation in the New World, and the years that he spent as our representative there, popularizing the coonskin cap and generally perfecting his frontiersman act, had an effect. He wasn't the first great amateur, but he was the one who promoted it as a particularly American quality.

The author is a contributing editor to the New York Times Magazine, and writes for Harper's, Rolling Stone, GQ, Wired and a number of other publications. Jack Hitt explores this innovative spirit of amateurism from numerous angles, offering us a plethora of insightful and occasionally comical sketches of visionary amateurs who walked out those back doors and into their garages, driven by innovative obsession and an "intoxicating sense of possibility."

Hitt explains how deeply this amateur spirit is implanted in the American consciousness, and why the future of this country resides in our back yards and garages, and not corporate boardrooms. His stories of amateurs in ornithology, genetic engineering, robotics, prehistoric archaeology and astronomy are often irreverent, entertaining and iconoclastic. There are times that the book seems to bog down and go off topic. For example, Hitt meanders into the history of the search for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, sidetracking into another random topic, then back to the woodpecker. But in the end it all seems to make sense when it's put together.

We have a different name for these outsiders, these garage dreamers. Today we call them hackers, and the coonskin cap of Franklin's time has been replaced by a hoodie. The ultimate garage dreamer of this moment in time is Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who was a beginning college student a scant decade ago.

I must admit to have approached this book cautiously, for though I've found his columns in various publications well worth reading, Hitt's earlier Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain from 1994 had been a favorite, and subjectively his best. This was a likable and entertaining travel account of an off-the-wall journey through history that turned into a provocative rethinking of the past. His new book has shown that he's older, wiser and his sometimes-quirky sense of humor is better than ever.

Jack Hitt is an expert and witty storyteller, and his tales here have an enjoyable way of rolling back upon themselves. He may meander and get a bit random at times, but in the end it's a highly enjoyable and upbeat book, full of fascinating nooks and crannies to explore. As he says, "Amateurs mainly just want to know."



6/5/2012

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really looked forward to reading this book, particularly at the moment when--browsing through its latter pages in my local library--I discovered that I had already read and thoroughly enjoyed one of its chapters, "Mighty White of You," which appeared in the July 2005 issue of Harper's magazine. I have even tried--unsuccessfully--to get my AP students to read that article as an example of just how fluid and flexible nonfiction writing can be, how it can take a dry university discipline (in this case archeology) and give it life through storytelling, offering novices the chance to learn something without all the tedium of textbook reading.

That I have been unsuccessful in these attempts is no fault of Jack Hitt's, or my students, for that matter. As readers, they're just not at the level of most Harper's features yet; and as a writer, Jack Hitt is thoroughly engaging and often delightful, deftly weaving the historical with the personal, often with great wit and humor: page 90 of the first edition was the funniest piece of text I've read in a long time. I read it in bed, laughing one of those deep belly laughs that makes the whole bed shake, earthquake style, to annoy your partner--in this case my wife, to whom I read the offending passage out loud, barely getting through it as my laughter took over completely. For the record, she thought it was funny too.

The term "Bunch of Amateurs" refers specifically to Americans, whose Do-it-Yourself, amateur ethos is part of what has always set us apart from the stern, trained and educated caste of European professionals. Hitt begins by examining this dynamic historically--contrasting Ben Franklin's rock star attitude in Paris with John Adams's priggish, Puritanical professionalism. Adams was, to Hitt, too old school, too anxious to please the French court, for whom he dresses with absurd Euro-formality while Franklin shows up (to the delight of all) wearing a coon-skin cap. He was an American, after all, and would appear as such, leaving poor Adams, who has followed all of the rules of protocol, looking comparatively foolish. "Unlike most kids with the KICK ME sign pinned to his backside, Adams knew it was there," Hitt writes, completing the humiliation.

But Hitt does not stop with the historical. The majority of the book deals with present day examples of the amateur spirit as it either does the job of pointing out that the emperor has no clothes (the great ivory-billed woodpecker "siting" of 2005, which pits the assertions of Cornell University's department of ornithology against the skeptics on a birding blog site); or as it ignites the revolution in genetic improvements; or as it overreaches in archeology, as a result of racial bias; or as it augments our knowledge of the stars, through the efforts of many hundreds of thousand back-yard astronomers.

Throughout all of this, I found myself learning new things. I have, for much of my life, suffered from an appalling lack of curiosity, particularly for things scientific. Hitt has made it possible for people like me to understand a lot of things that I considered beyond my understanding, thanks to his devotion to the amateur spirit. We are pretenders, Hitt argues, and this is a good thing:

"The lightness of being that comes with pretend, of being unmoored from everything you think you know and skimming effortlessly across the surface of something profound and deep--that sense, too, pervades this fundamental idea of the American character. We are the people who literally created playtime for adults. It's not a coincidence that as America's industrial might began to emerge in the early twentieth century and the world came to see us as the embodiment of the Protestant work ethic that we simultaneously created a new space for playfulness. America invented the 'weekend' and all that flows from that word--leisure, vacation, time off, mental-health days, etc. In other words, playtime."

Bunch of Amateurs wasn't always easy reading. For someone like me, who retreated to the liberal arts in college partly as a refuge from the demands that science put on my brain and ego, the chapter on astronomy was slow going. Still, as with the rest of the book, it was filled with great characters and engaging storytelling. In the end, it was definitely worth the effort.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had such potential to be a really good book. If only the author actually wrote about what he said he was going to write about, it would have been great. The book is supposed to be about amateurs who tinker and tackle various questions, often in opposition to professionals. In one case, that of Melissa Patterson in the area of synthetic biology, he does this.

In other areas, for example birding and archaeology, we get only scant mention of the amateurs and instead get extended lessons in the subject and the author's own opinions about the controversies in the field. The main characters in birding are all the professionals with vague references to "the bloggers" who oppose them. I want to meet the bloggers!

In the Kennewick man discussion we get a huge lesson in all the underlying issues but we don't get to meet the amateurs in any depth. Very disappointing.

[Danae · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out ok-- his premise was interesting enough, but I don't know if the anecdotes got worse or I just got tired of his schtick. The first few chapters I found quite engaging, but I really just started to get annoyed with his general tone-- there was pretty much no one, professional or amateur, that he wouldn't poke fun at. Not in a "ha, ha, you're all my friends" kind of way, but in an "I'm really superior to the lot of you" kind of way. And his bragging about what a big atheist he is, which he seems to think is relevant to a startling number of topics, got a little old. Mostly he wandered from topic to topic in a way that makes it difficult to explain how this bit you read relates to his stated goal of "searching for the American character." Some parts I genuinely could not say how they were meant to tie in. Maybe the book would have been better if it had been shorter. The writing itself was generally enjoyable, but it seemed that he was rehashing the same points too many times. Basically just kind of disappointing.

[Brooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a like many non-fiction books that have a mix of stories around a theme. The theme here is the idea of the American Amateurs- the Ben Franklins and Bill Gates, The uncredentialt versus the establishment and PHDs. However, it does not always hold together. It starts with amateur archeology and who were the first Americans. How some believe the celts came to America prior to the land bridge from Asia. Or maybe Homo Sapiens developed in Europe and spread from there rather than Africa. He points out many of the amateurs may have some unseen biases. He then tackles John Adams, Harvard Lawyer versus Ben Franklin, inventor. That story has been told many times. The other major story is of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker fiasco. It really just rambles about the different characters, the establishment versus amateur. However, in this case both the amateurs and professionals seem to have gotten it wrong. But my favorite part is that every time there is a big “rediscover” of the Ivory Bill, the country is able to set aside more critical habitat – so it is not all bad. The next section is on the do-it-yourself craze. Starting with the homebrew club of Apple fame, is now DYI genetics and gene-splicing. He then ends with DYI telescopes and how amateurs are changing astronomy.

The final few pages jumps to the conclusions – do what you love, that is an amateur

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The concept of this book sounded interesting, but unfortunately it just didn't hold my attention and I only got halfway through it.

[Anthony · Rating 1 out of 5]

The idea to write about a "bunch of amateurs" was a good one but the execution was terrible. Not what I expected to read.

[Nicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really made me think about the relationship that optimism has with the American Character, and the many different faces that that optimism can take. I chose to read this right now because of how much talk there has been about "outsiders" breathing new life into things, like say politics. This book made me realize that the outsiders we are currently dealing with are actually a crude bastardization of the American tradition that favors outsiders. Overall, it gave me a lot to think about, but I wish it was structured in a different way.

[Bardfilm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very uneven. The section on the ivory-billed woodpecker was outstanding! The one about telescopes of considerably lower quality.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 French word meaning passionate lover, and while amateurs can be off-track or irritatingly obsessed, they sometimes see possibilities more clearly than professionals because they aren’t so invested in the prevalent paradigm. An amateur invented the Dobsonian telescope, making backyard astronomy affordable, backyard rocketry amateurs have been hired by NASA, amateurs like the young Steve Jobs envisioned the personal computer, and it was ardent birding amateurs who spotted flaws in the evidence the Cornel Lab of Ornithology presented to prove that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was not extinct. A recent piece in the Washington Post Magazine profiled an amateur fossil collector in Maryland who has revolutionized the thinking about what sorts of dinosaurs lived in the eastern United States; I'll put the web address for the article in the comments section under this review.

According to Hitt, the cutting edge of amateurism today is the scary sounding “biohacking”, or extracting DNA from one life form and inserting it in another in order to achieve sometimes whimsical results, like yogurt that can glow in the dark. It’s apparently bored computer programmers, unexcited by tweaking existing programs like Excel, who are looking for the next frontier and driving this trend.

Bunch of Amateurs has plenty of Bill Bryson-like side trips whose purpose isn’t always obvious, at least at first, but they are all so interesting I was happy to see where they led. It was fascinating and somewhat horrifying to read about the sordid origin of the word Caucasian, and Hitt’s descriptions of the distinctly different types of robots being created in America (functional), Japan (physically life-like) and Europe (emotionally intelligent) have embedded cultural observations I’m still trying to parse, and sent me running to internet to see examples .

[El_kiablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prologue to this book makes it sound as if it is going to be a search into the heart of what being an amateur is, particularly in these days where new technology is offering so many opportunities for individuals to interact with - and sometimes go to war with - the officially sanctioned systems. Hitt announces that he's going to explore a specific facet of the American character, and explain what makes us a nation of experimenters.

This is not that book.

This is a series of longish essays clumped around a similar theme, and not any sort of rigorous argument. I get why the stories of the ivory billed woodpecker hunters are lumped together with the biohacker who is trying to manufacture glow in the dark yogurt in their apartment - but I don't think that those isolated examples say too much about what America as a whole is, nor do I think that they do much to paint a definitive portrait of what amateur-ness is.

Which is not to say that the book isn't interesting or informative; it is. But Hitt's history as a contributor to This American Life makes perfect sense after reading this book, because that radio show tends t dance around it's themes without really pushing any strong conclusions one way or another, and that's more or less what Hitt does here. The difference is that I have lower expectations for an hour long radio show; I expect it to entertain me and inform me, but not necessarily exhaustively so. Books, however, are a different ballpark, and the same approach in a book format left me feeling like I'd read something kind of inconsequential.

The material that is here is solid, and I enjoyed learning more about Ben Franklin and about Kennewick man. But I do feel like there's a longer more complete version of this book somewhere out in the ether which would be a lot more satisfying.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I can't bear to give it just two stars because the writing is just so good. But it barely makes three. Jack Hitt is a wonderful craftsman of the written word and the humor throughout the book is what kept me going. I must admit I was also intrigued by the premise: that depending upon the topic and the pursuit, the notion of being an amateur can be a compliment or a curse. The book begins strong but then it devolves into a lot of heavy-handed judgments on certain topics that were unnecessary. The book picks up at the end again so long as you forgive Hitt and his constant use of garage tinkering imagery that runs unceasingly throughout the book (apparently, going to one's garage is both necessary for one to qualify as an amateur, and also a uniquely American diversion too). I hope Hitt and his superb storytelling skills strike upon a better topic and better handling of said topic in future tomes. And if you've never heard of Hitt or his humor, I recommend that you start with his story "Rent" which you can hear on Moth; it is perfect, heights I had yearned for this book to achieve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNw7b...

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is one that really interests me, the idea that there are people around America puttering in their garages and shaking up the establishment. In reality, Hitt spends too much time on his pet controversies, is overly critical of the established "professionals", and often forgets his original thesis. Many of the projects and amateurs that he does spend time with are interesting and their work is exciting, but to get to them, you have to slog through a lot that isn't.

In the end, I'm glad I read it, but it isn't something that I'll read again.

[Alexander O. Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

For books such as these, I much prefer James Gleick's style and citation approach. If the book is meant to 'enlighten' or introduce the public to unpopular, counterintuitive, or cutting edge approaches to knowledge subjects, there needs to be at least some clear citations to guide us rather than journalistic anacdotal experience and made up names. Although the book tells an interesting alternative approach to academic convention, there's no reason to believe it except for journalistic faith and the aesthetics of story style.

[Max Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The larger thesis of this book - that amateurs matter - is great. The author has a good mixture of examples, from Benjamin Franklin as the quintessential example of American amateurs to modern "home-brewers" splicing yogurt genes. The slow, collective Internet-based debunking of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker sightings ruined my day. Not the most amazing non-fiction I've read, but very sociological and worth your time.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book. Hitt has an engaging style. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on biohackers and can think of several people I know who would enjoy it and/or be terrified by it. I will definitely keep my eye open for more of his books now that I have some idea of how entertaining and informative they can be.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bunch of fabulous

Wow. Loved, loved loved this book. Snappy, tight, funny-as-hell writing and fascinating stories of our American quirk of amateurism. From Ben Franklin to Kennewick Man to the Sidewalk Astronomers, and back to Ben, it is clear that amateurs are responsible for fueling the innovation and energy of our nation. Brilliantly written. Must read. Get it!

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine learns that her preferred contraceptive sponge has been discontinued. She buys up every sponge that she can find in NYC and resigns herself to a sexual finitude. Every encounter will cut into her stash, so she is forced to ask, with respect to a man in whom she is interested, "Is he really spongeworthy?". I've been thinking about that episode a lot lately. For a combination of reasons, awareness of my own mortality has shifted from a vague, not-entirely-believed idea to an emotionally forceful reality and one of the ways that this is manifesting is panic about finishing the reading I'd like to do before I die. The erudition that I would like to project (Sometimes I think that, if I'm really honest, all I really care about is manipulating the impression that others have of me.) has some yawning gaps that aren't going to be filled if I keep wasting my time on the literary equivalents of the sort of diposable, fungible, sexual partner that my friend used to refer to as a Twink (named after the snack cake - nutritionally empty but, as Kevin would say, sometimes exactly what you want). Choosing Gone Girl means not choosing Middlemarch. All of this is to say that - these days - I find myself asking, "Is this book spongeworthy?"

Take this worthy effort. I became smitten with Jack Hitt after listening to this episode of the Southern Foodways Alliance podcast Gravy, ostensibly about the South and the 70s, two subjects of endless fascination for me, but really about the necessity for white Southerners (and white Americans of all regions) to confront the high moral stakes of the "heritage or hate" kerfuffle. This was written, mind you, before Dylan Roof, before Charlottesville. I've listened to that essay more times than I care to admit. I made my wife listen to it just two weeks ago on our anniversary trip to Charleston (scene of the teenage reminiscences in the essay). "Southern-fried Baked Alaska" is just terrific, simultaneously hilarious and morally grave, and Hitt's witty, humane voice has brought me back to it again and again.

I wasn't swept off my feet in quite the same way by Bunch of Amateurs. I got nervous in the first chapter when Hitt confessed that he began this celebration of American dabblers unsure of the book he wanted to write. I needn't have been. The research and analysis are solid, the reporting of field encounters with various quirky American mavericks/wingnuts* is charming and lends necessary narrative drive, and the witty Hitt voice is, sentence by sentence, as winning as I had hoped it would be. He sets up his argument by contrasting the characters of Benjamin Franklin (improvisational, sometimes slapdash amateur) and John Adams (impeccably prepared but joyless and hidebound expert) and he brings the work to a satisfying conclusion with the portrait of an amateur who became a Franklin expert without really intending to.

Bunch of Amateurs is a good book. Like I said, worthy. But spongeworthy? For a reader in my straitened circumstances? Not so sure, but it's not Jack Hitt's fault that I didn't budget my time better.

*Unequivocally, the best part of this book is Hitt's reporting about the time he spends with a coder/raver who is trying to genetically alter bacteria on her kitchen table so that they will produce glow-in-the-dark yogurt. You know, for the kids.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This title is one that i picked up and put down several times. The premise was always attractive to me--the underlying amateur mindset that embodies the American spirit.

The book starts off diving right into the origins of Amateurism in the country, with one of the most famous amateurs--Ben Franklin. After that chapter, there are so wonderful vignettes throughout the book that make it worth reading. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on biohacking and the Ivory billed woodpecker. The latter truly underscores the perception gap between amateur and credentialed expert why the amateur is often superior when seeking out novel discoveries, especially when it comes to the rigors of scientific debate.

If you're looking for an academic breakdown of what makes 'an amateur', this book is certainly not that. The style more or less follows that of the experiential journalist. Jack Hitt's forays into the amateur world takes almost as much attention as the amateur's themselves. He also unnecessarily colors some of the stores with stale political attacks. They didn't make me stop reading but they added nothing to the story being told.

Overall, I'd say if you have a fleeting or keen interest in the maker world and amateur discoverer, this book would be worth reading. Any fans of authors like Plimpton, A.J. Jacobs, etc. would probably enjoy this.

[John Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting and insightful work; a humorous but informative description of the nature and value of amateurism in America. Beware of some minor bias in some of the author's antidotes, occasionally manifested as simply B.S.; such as his taking seriously the claim of some abortionist doctor in North Dakota that he has seen some right-to-life protestors in his practice in another town secretly getting an abortion. The fact Hitt bought that in order to make some point about hypocrisy, leads you to suspect the honesty in his other claims. But, overall this is an enjoyable and informative read.

[Mira Sturdivant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook info: Narrated by the author. SO good, he is a great speaker and really grasped my attention in a special way that the text alone wouldn't have.

-

This book has a chapter on some weird birdwatching in-fighting, and it had me glued to the edge of my seat. I was listening to this section on audiobook and it had me so excited that I turned off the sewing machine I was quilting on and stared at the wall, and had to remind myself to close my mouth.

I do understand why some people have felt misled by the title and expected something else. But any book that gets that kind of attention out of me without effort is worth 5 stars to me.

He reeeally knows how to tell a good story.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a lot of fun, and Hitt makes his point about amateurism well. The best chapter is the one about amateur archeology and theories about the first people in the Americas - it does the best job of touching on the dark possibilities of amateur pursuits, as well as explaining the many fallacies that befall human thinking and decision-making for both amateurs and professionals; it does this without being a drag. However, this book was published in 2012 - what would Hitt have to say about all the amateur scientists and conspiracy theorists out there today?

[Michael West · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 3.5. Really enjoyed much of it, and the This American Life tone comes through. Sometimes the collections to the amateur/professional divide were quite loose and might have done with trimming (eg the Kennewick Man and Ben Franklin chapters). Loved the woodpecker chapter with its commentary both on pro-am divides (including mixed strengths and weaknesses) and on the morphing of evidence to suit a narrative over time.

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 jargon of academes as he does through the hyperbolic his amateurs.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

RIYL: Bill Bryson

The chapters are varied in quality, but when it’s good it’s great. Loved the chapter about the ivory-billed woodpecker. Should’ve just skimmed the chapters on bio-hacking and astronomy.

[Pearse Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice book by one of my peer's fathers; well-read on audio and full of curious characters and amateur science. This is the last audiobook I will ever listen to while attending Oberlin College in person.

[Rds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great premise but I found it a slog.

[Amy Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Hitt was my classmate at Sewanee, and is a very good writer.

[MisterLiberry Head · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other readers may be as relieved as I was that “Job Creators” in the title of Jack Hitt’s captivating book had very little relevance to the content. The publishers probably thought teasing entrepreneurship would add interest; however, the author largely identifies amateurs this way: “they aren’t interested in marketability, only workability” (p233). Hitt is more interested in a discussion of the American national character than he is in analyzing the Wall Street value of new killer apps--which suited me just fine.

Good science writing is marked by “finding some way to carry back from this outpost of human endeavor a sense of the specialist’s zeal and understanding” (p227). The real trick is to help the reader both appreciate the science and enjoy the story. Frankly, there’s some excellent writing here. I loved Hitt throwing around terms like “swaggering sesquipedalianismo” (p157) and joking about blogs “dipped in upstart snark.” The author’s ease with language helps the reader share in the fun of seeing “how amateurism at its best confounds uptight pros”: (p84)and lets everyone join in the amateur’s wonderful “sense of open-ended playfulness” (p120).

BUNCH OF AMATEURS got off to a great start with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams set up as conflicting intellectual paradigms, much as Jeffersonianism versus Hamiltonianism locked our early history into conflict between rival ideals of American government. Franklin won both the PR war and the philosophical casting of America as “a land of improvisationalists” (p42). From France in 1778, Hitt drops in on the war between amateur birders and university ornithologists over the ivory-billed woodpecker (codenamed “IBWO”), kitchen-sink, DIY gene-splicers, and teenaged roboticists. Hitt considers the current passion for open-source wiki-ism to be “amateurism on steroids” (p133), and he profiles several fields that are well-suited to crowd-sourcing and the passionate amateur’s “start-from-the-beginning thinking” (p244). The strange saga of Kennewick Man shows how prehistoric paleontology became a locus for all kinds of unconscious cognitive bias. At the same time, telescopic astronomy exhibits the best and most useful trait of the amateur--a “talent for not seeing things according to the dominant paradigm” (p69). Despite my personal interest in the astronomy, I thought telescope-building Chapter 6 badly slowed down the narrative--but it ended strongly with a memorable vision of “a heaven filled with Gatsby lights” (p248).