Maker Event: Author Alec Foege on The Tinkerers

Once upon a time, the United States was a nation of tinkerers – amateurs and professionals alike who applied their ingenuity and talent to the challenges of their day. Guided by the curiosity of an inquiring mind, a desire to know how things work, and a belief that anything can be improved, they came up with the inventions that laid the foundations for the American century. Today, it seems that that can-do spirit has been overtaken by a general hopelessness around intractable problems. But as Westporter Alec Foege shows in The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great, reports of tinkering’s death have been greatly exaggerated. C-span's Book TV will be here filming the event.

Foege is also the author of Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio; Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story; and The Empire God Built: Inside Pat Robertson’s Media Machine. He is a former Rolling Stone contributing editor and People magazine senior writer. 

“Once you acquire the tinkerer’s mindset, as described in Alec Foege’s engrossing book, the world becomes a gigantic spare parts bin, inviting you to become a creative participant, rather than a passive consumer, in your manufactured environment.”
—Mark Frauenfelder, Editor-in-Chief, MAKE

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