Every Tool's a Hammer

Life Is What You Make It

By: Adam Savage

Narrated by: Adam Savage

Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

MythBusters’ Adam Savage - Discovery Channel star and one of the most beloved figures in science and tech - shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully turning your idea into reality. 

Adam Savage is a maker. From Chewbacca’s bandolier to a thousand-shot Nerf gun, he has built thousands of spectacular projects as a special effects artist and the cohost of MythBusters. Adam is also an educator, passionate about instilling the principles of making in the next generation of inventors and inspiring them to turn their curiosity into creation.

In this practical and passionate guide, Adam weaves together vivid personal stories, original sketches and photographs from some of his most memorable projects, and interviews with many of his iconic and visionary friends in the arts and sciences - including Pixar director Andrew Stanton, Nick Offerman, Oscar-winner Guillermo Del Toro and artist Tom Sachs - to demonstrate the many lessons he has picked up from a lifetime of making.

Things like: don’t wait until everything is perfect - in your workshop or in your life - to begin. Plan with pencil and paper. Sweep up every day. Learn from doing. Share your toys. There is an exact tool for every task (Adam probably has four of them in his wondrous shop), but if you need to pound in a nail and all you have handy is a skill saw - hammer away. The most important thing, always, is just that you make something.

Every Tool’s a Hammer is sure to guide and inspire you to build, make, invent, explore and, most of all, enjoy the thrills of being a creator.  

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

©2019 Adam Savage (P)2019 Simon & Schuster UK

Critic Reviews

"Adam has drawn for us an imperative how-to for creativity... I am aware of no human outside of fiction more qualified to pen this rousing paean to making. I adore this book," (Nick Offerman, star of Parks and Recreation)
 

Adam Savage Just Gets Me

I loved every minute of this book. There were moments where I just wanted to cry while listening to Adam Savage speaking, because it felt like he just understood me the way few other people ever have.

This book has excited me and inspired me more than I can describe. I cannot wait to get started on my next project.

A Project Management Book for a Maker

Has some good project management tips - but definitely a book tailored more for makers.

Dude. Like dude. Dang

This book is so good. I love watching tested and Adams one day builds and when I listened to this book it was like I could finally understand and connect some things that he does in his shop with his past. I could feel his passion and hard work that he put into this book and it was even better because he was the one reading it. I don’t read. I really don’t read. But I really liked this.

10/10 listened to it 7 times and still love it

Amazing and would suggest it to anyone with a passion for creating and making. Great for listening to while working on big and small projects

Loved it! Great content on creativity and making

If you love creativity and making this is a great book. The beauty of this book is it gave me permission to do the things I was already doing, but thought I was weird doing them.

Great Book

I like his explanations.
I would recommend this book to everyone.
It was very well written.

Brilliant, fun, and surprisingly poignant!

This is about way more than just being a maker. Adam fills this book with tons of information about working efficiently and effectively, but also draws surprising life lessons from his journey as a maker from childhood, through mythbusters, to where he is now. I just finished the book and I think I'm going to go right back and listen through it again!

Thank you Adam for a terrific book!

Inspiring story read by the man himself

I've been looking forward to the book for a while. Adam Savage doesn't disappoint.

Insightful and humble

The insights into making, creating, working, collaborating & building are valuable to more than just makers. Adam’s insights into productivity, working with others, understanding your own motivations, and working efficiently, experimenting and iterating ideas would be right at home in any business book.
Adam’s humbleness, openness and refreshing honesty in sharing his journey as a maker, including missteps, failures, and learning should be a reminder to young makers that success isn’t a straight line, and every experience teaches us something that can make us better as makers, and as human beings.

Enthusiasm and battle stories make it work

This book is intended for those who identify as makers, whether of art or of technology or of craft. The people who should get the most out of this book are the ones who are trying to think about how they can bring the things they have in their minds into being and how they can how they can hang onto the critical momentum they need to complete their projects. His background is working for special effects houses and for the cinematic industry which is something very distant from my experience. He does mention some of the epic builds that happened on the Mythbusters television program that fans will recall. Some of those exploits happened not far from where I live now. But this book goes far beyond that by describing his life as a maker long before and after that program that made him famous. I can relate to it because I used to work with my hands quite a lot when I was an experimental physicist building experiments and later on when I was a small business owner repairing furniture. That was when I had my own tools and had a stock of materials with properties I needed to understand. Now I'm very detached from that state of mind that the author describes which includes single-minded devotion to the process of making the object, the proper maintanance of a workspace, and working with other makers.

He consistently comes across as a person who has always thrown himself into the work. The book is thematically organized with plenty of stories along the way. The parts that stick out in my mind are the sections on checklists and organizing projects by checking off boxes for each atomic step. He talks about tools and about materials organization working with others and a lot of it has to be in service to his cosplay passion. When he talks about the role of drawing in clarifying one's ideas and communicating them to others you can see that this is something that he finds really as a core part of his way of thinking.
I liked learning about his idea of how you start out working with a cheap tool of a given type to learn whether it's for you and how to graduate to a more perfect version of the tool once you know that it is. He writes and speaks with an appealing humility, or, rather, tends to boast about about the artifacts that he's been to do justice to by applying the toolkit of a generalist to every challenge they posed. He owns up frequently to times where he didn't measure up and the lessons that he learned from those episodes. There are many reminiscences of manic energy in this book, but towards the end he takes on on a more reflective attitude to where he's been and what he's learned over the years. This philosophical section may be the most valuable take away from the book. A lot of the ideas he includes are credited to other makers he has gotten to know, whether craft people, skilled tradespeople, or trainees who have worked in one of his shops.

So I would say that I admire this book though it's not immediately applicable to my situation since I have no immediate desire to set up a shop. I can see it being life changing for other makers who have similar broad interests. He sees something transcendent in works of cinema that I find uninteresting. And that's okay. I think he's just more in tune with his senses, from the years of working a piece of material and fashioning it into something, compared to the more conceptual approach to projects that I favor.

I listened to this as an audiobook read by the author which also comes along with a PDF containing illustrations of the works he describes in loving detail. Of course his enthusiasm and deep knowledge shines all through this book.

Meh

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Adam Savage but this book is well, not fully a book.

If I knew that 50% of it was going to be a list of equipment and glues I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

It’s starts very inspirational indeed and it does make you want to make things but if you’ve made things before that makes the last half kinda pointless.

I don’t believe it’s Adam’s fault, it feels more like a publishers push to get a book out than an authors meticulous process to create a masterpiece.

A shame but I’m kinda hoping there will be another which is more in depth about who Adam really is.

Young designer(maker)’s necessity

I am a industrial designer, having a similar affinity for craft and having to endure the tribulations of project management I thought this would have something in it for me. I can say fervently this book is an essential piece of wisdom. narrated with the infectious and nostalgic excitement of Adam savage, whom I’ve adored since I was child watching mythbusters, I can’t imagine a person alive who wouldnt get something out of this absolute gem of a niche maker-centric self help book

A manifesto for making

Adam Savages love for his craft shines through every single line of this book. inspiring and insightful at all times.

Wonderful book, excellent narration

Always been a fan of Adam Savage and this book is so interesting, the narration is lovely as its read by Adam himself which bring a whole new level to it.

Makers, this book is a must.

I found this book to be as useful as any of the tools in my shop. If you take this book in in its entirety there are gems inside that really will help you with I would say any creative endeavour. From how to approach and plan a project to how to organise things in the most efficient way for you, I would definitely recommend this book, It is informative and funny.

Brilliant and engaging

Definitely a replayer(audio equivalent of a reread?) look forward to approaching my future projects with a different mindset

Now one of my favourite books

Just the book I needed at this time. Could not have asked for better advice. Adam is a true hero

The whole book plays in mono...

terrible quality in mono. the whole thing. and Amazon make it really hard to get a refund.

Great performance, story is a little lacking, but still enjoyable

I loved watching Mythbusters so was looking forward to listening to this book. It’s generally so much better when the author reads the book (at least for nonfiction) and Adam comes across as very enthusiastic which was great.

The book itself is mostly Adam talking about his methods from list-making to tools so it’s not really a story. Overall I still enjoyed listening.

charliesworkshop47 insta

loved it teaches you just cause somthings finished doesnt mean that it is it just means it finished for now great book