How to Build Impossible Things

Lessons in Life and Carpentry

De: Mark Ellison

Narrado por: Paul Bellantoni

Brought to you by Penguin.

Wildly irreverent and beautifully warm, this is a story about practice, competence and failure, told through tales in a world most of us never see.

Life is worth regular examination. I have found a great deal of meaning in learning to make things. Each of us has tidbits of understanding that others might appreciate were we to share them. As a carpenter building high-end homes for New York City's richest, I work on multi-million dollar projects every day. People come to me when they want the impossible. Most are ill conceived; many are inadvisable, some are downright dangerous. But when I'm able to craft something glorious, it's magic. Yet in every project, without fail, things go wrong.

Glamour, luxury and refinement are products of a flawed, human process, of missed deadlines, overrun budgets, heated tantrums and scrapped blueprints. Throughout my career I have observed, erred, learned, finessed, apologised, and resisted the urge to say I told you so. I offer these tales from the trade in the hope that others might find them amusing, instructive and inspirational. There are many good reasons to work. Here are a few of them.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Mark Ellison (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

Like sitting in a room with Mark and hearing the best stories in the world, wound up with wisdom, craft, and hard-won philosophy (Burkhard Bilger)

A brilliantly engaging storyteller, laugh-out-loud funny, loving, cheekily smug . . . An enjoyable read on making, inventing and what might contribute to a life worth living (Julie Mehretu)

Mark is an amazing polymath - and an Olympic-level aesthete. Unlike many polymaths and aesthetes, though, when he gets up in the morning, it's to make real, physical things - including this book (Craig Nevill-Manning, Engineering Director, Google NYC)