How to Build Impossible Things: Lessons in Life and Carpentry

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An illuminating memoir-cum-meditation on work and creativity by the brilliant veteran carpenter, Mark Ellison. 'Gorgeous . . . contains fascinating insights about working with your hands, the nature of talent, and how to create a meaningful life' A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Puzzler 'Exquisite, purposeful, absorbing . . . a book with much to teach us all' Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies 'People think I'm a genius because I remember my high school math' When Mark Ellison left high school, no one thought he would go anywhere. A self-proclaimed 'serial dropout', Mark spent his young adult years taking work where he found it. Who would have thought that forty years later he would be regarded as a great carpenter, making a living out of building homes for the rich and famous Full of warmth, wisdom and irreverent humour, this is the story of what carpentry can teach us about the satisfaction and joy that comes from doing something well for a long time. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed to algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, Mark exposes the messy wiring behind the pristine walls - and the mindset that any of us can develop to build our own impossible things. Written with refreshing candour, this is an essential book about building life on your own terms, and the possibilities that await when we forge our own path.

Reviews

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 * The New Yorker *
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
On a job site Mark makes irreverent banter while scribbling measurements on the back of pizza box as works of astonishing complexity and precision materializes under his direction. Now he has somehow applied this same deceptively offhand but exacting craft to unspooling this collection of tales from his ascent to the summit of one of the most demanding construction habitats on earth -- David Hotson, architect, Skyhouse and Pinnacle
Wry, laconic and packed with salient life lessons, this is a book that will encourage everyone to attempt to build the life they wish to live * Simple Things Magazine *

Author Bio

Mark Ellison is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York. A man with an affinity for challenging work, he has designed and constructed some of New York's most elaborate and expensive homes, and been profiled in the New Yorker. But, as a native of the old steel town Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, his route into the building trade and the mastery of a craft was unexpected, moving from construction labourer to helper and finally to carpenter. Now, at the age of sixty, he has written his first book.