I wasn’t 100% sure what I was getting into with this book. Amazon has it listed as #8 in Mid Atlantic U.S. Biographies, #1 in Science Experiments & Projects, #7 in Mythology & Folklore Encyclopedias (at the time I wrote this). But as I was listening to this book, I found it to be part memoir, part self-help, part business and part how-to. Basically, Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, writes a story similar to how he was on the show, a little bit of everywhere and everything. The big thing you will take away from this book is his passion for building/making and his love of sharing his passion with others.
“Making is more than the physical act of building. It’s dancing, it’s sewing. It’s cooking. It’s writing songs. It’s silk-screening. It’s breaking new trails both literally and figuratively.
In this book, Adam takes you through his passion for making. He takes you through and how he learned all these processes through trial and error. He talks about how his mentors have given him tools to become successful and how he continually modifies his processes to improve on them to what works best for him.
I love how he talks about everything from making lists and how that evolved over the years and how difficult it was for him to make lists in the beginning, being the type of guy who just wants to dive in (If you watched Mythbusters, you will see Adam isn’t known for being the big planner, but more the type to just dive into a project).
There are three parts that really stood out to me. First was a story about how a very young Adam immortalizes his favorite toy bear. He started out with a drawing and how, even has a very young child, he wanted it to be more than just a drawing. So he broke the rule of stay away from the razor blades to cut out the picture. The story really shows how supportive his parents were, even when he broke a very strict rule, but for a reason of making something.
Second part that really stood out to me was about mentorship. He talks about how Jaime, also of Mythbuster’s fame, mentored him as one of Adam’s first bosses. Adam talks a lot about how much he learned, not just from Jaime, but all his mentors and took different pieces of their styles and made it his own. He also talks about how he is now mentoring his own teams, on the shows and in his own business. This part of the book would be great for a lot of business individuals.
The last piece that really stood out to me was very early in Adam’s carrier. It was his second project to help a film student build a set. It was what seemed like an easy build. A small room with an ATM machine. But it proved more difficult than young adult Adam could do on his own. It had complications that he didn’t consider and he didn’t give himself enough time to compensate for difficulties. It was his first big failure. The biggest thing was that not only did he fail, but it affected not just him, but the film student that needed the set. This story again showed how his father was very supportive, but also gave Adam the hard truths. He screwed up and lost a friend over it. There wasn’t anything he could do to make up for it. The only thing was to learn from it, so that he never did anything like that again.
Like I said, this book is many things and it is hard to put it into a box or genre because it covers so many things, deadlines, tools, and how to force yourself to actually finish a product. As Adam mentioned above in the quote, makers are more than just builders. They are people who create anything, be it a coder, a writer, a dancer or pretty much anything where you start with nothing and create something. I think anyone can listen to this audiobook and take something away from the story to use in your everyday life.
Narration
So Adam Savage is also the one who narrates this story. Listening to it you can really tell his passion for the things he discusses. You can really hear about stuff that he was excited about years ago are still exciting to him today. You can also hear how disappointed he was in himself with that story of the set he messed up when still very young. Adam is a performer at heart and you could hear that in his telling of his own story.
**I'd like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.