Makers Recommendations & Giveaway!

The Makers Faire is pulling into NYC this weekend and in that spirit, we’ve compiled a Makers Books & Manuals Recommendation List for aspiring scientists, engineers, and makers, courtesy of Cory Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, and lots of MAKE Magazine contributors.

Many of the listed books, manuals, catalogs, etc. are hard to find, but if you are willing to do a little extra work, there are a whole host of amazing DIY and makers texts out there not available in your corner bookstore. Some of these are catalogs; some are just obscure. All are intriguing and heartily recommended by our contributors. Try your luck with eBay, AbeBooks, and other used booksellers and traders.

For those who can’t make it to Makers Faire, Tor.com is giving away 10 sets tile games from Makers by Cory Doctorow, created by the awesome folks at Idiots ’Books. We’ll be randomly selecting five folks who retweet this post on Twitter and five who comment on Facebook account in the next 24 hours. (Until 3 PM Friday.)

You can read Makers by Cory Doctorow here on Tor.com.

Table of Contents

JUMP TO:
Projects
Electronics
Theory
Rare and Hard-to-Find Gems
Fiction
Arduino
Makers Book Recommendation Index

Projects:

The Best of MAKE
Celebrating the resurgence of making things, a classic already. – Phil Torrone, senior editor, Make Magazine

The Boy Mechanic, original edition, 1913
From an era pre-television, when children actually knew how to make things and not hurt themselves in the process. This book is a wonderful piece of history, even if some of the projects are dated. – Saul Griffith, of Other Lab, 323D, Energy Literacy, Wattz On, and Howtoons

Design for Manufacturability Handbook, by James G. Bralla
Required reading in Industrial Design classes, this is the most comprehensive reference book I know for manufacturing mass produced items out of most modern materials. While intended for designers of products for standard mass production, it is also very useful for the garage tinker or small scale designer. It covers everything from forging to CNC laser cutting, and contains detailed information on material specs and specific tips for each manufacturing process including avoiding common errors in design that could compromise your project when attempting to produce it. – Noah Beasley, industrial design student and maker

The Fundamentals of Digital Art, by Richard Colson
This is a really comprehensive history of “new media” projects that involve electronics as well and I find it useful as a reference point. There are only so many theremins you can design before moving on :) – Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Arduino hacker

Google SketchUp for Dummies, by Aidan Chopra
Google’s free 3D design program, SketchUp, takes a bit of getting used to, but once its basic stretch-and-squash underpinnings become clear, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without this. Aidan Chopra, who works at Google’s SketchUp Labs, wrote the best book about it. – Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of MAKE

Great International Paper Plane Book, by Jerry Mander
I like this because the author’s name is funny. He also wrote Four Arguments for the Abolition of Television, but don’t hold that against him. This has an inspiring piece about how the DIY paper airplane competition had many millions of contributors and showed fabulous innovation, yet the SST (same era) had cost over-runs and was ultimately a failure. – Saul Griffith, of Other Lab, 323D, Energy Literacy, Wattz On, and Howtoons

How to Build with Grid Beam, by Phil Jergenson, Richard Jergenson, and Wilma Keppel
Grid Beam is an open source, modular construction system based on wooden and metal beams with holes drilled through them at a standard size and spacing. People have used the re-usable, bolt-together pieces to make furniture, vehicles, shacks, wind turbinesand hundreds of other things. – Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of MAKE

Pocket Ref
If you’re stranded without Google, it’s like pocket Google + Wikipedia all rolled up in to one… – Phil Torrone, senior editor, MAKE

The Way Things Work, by David Macaulay
I was given this as gift when I was 15 years old and it got me hooked on design and product design and figuring out what things are made of. Ideal if you’re wanting to get your kids into “making.” – Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Arduino hacker

Electronics:

Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots, by Gareth Branwyn
Okay, this is MY book, but I still think it’s the best beginner’s guide on robotics (along with Dave Hrynkiw’s Junkbots, Bugbots, & Bots on Wheels). The Toronto Globe & Mail said it contained “brilliant writing and impressive scholarship” and set “a literary standard for how tech books should be written.” Published in 2004, most of it is surprisingly up-to-date, mainly because I focused on BEAM (analog-based) robotics and how to think about robotic design in general. – Gareth Branwyn, senior editor at MAKE and runs the Make: Online website

The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications
Geared towards radio, but covers so much about electronics, hacking, RF, assembly, etc. its been revised yearly since 1926. – Limor “LadyAda” Fried, winner of the EFF’s Pioneer Award

The Art of Electronics, by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill
Not something I can read cover to cover but it’s likely the best resource for electronics ever written. – Phil Torrone, senior editor, MAKE

Making Things Talk, Tom Igoe
By Tom Igoe, the co-founder of the Arduino project, this is a really great book for intermediates and more advanced uses of electronics, especially making stuff that’s wireless. Lots of great instructables there. – Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Arduino hacker

Robot Builder’s Bonanza, by Gordon McComb and Myke Predko
If you are a robotics hobbyist, this has been the best one stop reference around to get information on building a robot from the first hardware store trip through body construction, electronics, and programming. It covers such issues as battery selection and power system design, sensors (including readily built vision systems), locomotion, and navigation. – Noah Beasley, industrial design student and maker

Voice of the Crystal, by H. Peter Friedrichs
This self-published guide to building radios from scratch has a stellar reputation amongst radio geeks, and for good reason. It is filled with great ideas and utterly awesome projects. I love the author’s assertion that every curbside can of garbage each trash night contains all the parts needed to build at least one radio. He uses such castaway (and other) components to build headphones out of soup cans, shoe polish tins, and disposable lighters(!), paper tube condensers (old school capacitors), detectors (old school diodes), and radio coils. If you have a maker bone in your body, you can’t look through this thing without itching to grab your tools and dive into the nearest dumpster. – Gareth Branwyn, senior editor at MAKE and runs the Make: Online website

Theory:

The Anarchist Cookbook, William Powell
Turn on, tune in, cook explosives. – Limor “LadyAda” Fried, winner of the EFF’s Pioneer Award

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, by Emmanuel Goldstein
Decades documenting the hacker struggle, politics and more. – Phil Torrone, senior editor, MAKE

The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Clifford Stoll
Read this book to enjoy the descriptions of the hacker monitor systems involving inline printers on data lines and DIY paging alert systems that Clifford put together to try and monitor a hacker trying to break into his school’s computer system. – Bre Pettis, hacker and maker and teacher

How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand
So much information encased here, it’s absolutely inspirational. – Rose White

Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B. Crawford
A sort of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the early 21^st century, this book is an indictment of the modern workplace and a personal ode to the joys of making things yourself, written by a philosophy professor who also owns a motorcycle repair shop. Crawford eloquently argues why we need to have fewer “symbolic analysts” and “knowledge workers” being cranked through our educational systems and more people who understand how the physical world works and how to hack it for fun and profit. – Gareth Branwyn, senior editor at MAKE and runs the Make: Online website

Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
You can learn a lot about how computers work by reading this book about the early days of computing innovation. Origin of the phrase “full of win.” – Bre Pettis, hacker and maker and teacher

Steal This Book, Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman’s classic book on “How to Rip Off the System” masquerades as a mere guide to low-level crime, but actually contains innumerable tips on how to turn garbage into gold, from directions for turning tires into sandals to instructions for founding a co-op store. The original is fun, if outdated, but the free online wiki version is heavily annotated and revised to bring it up to date. – Cory Doctorow, author of Makers

Rare and Hard-to-Find Gems:

Digital by Design
This is a great book that showcases some fabulous projects that can inspire anyone who wants to get into the business of “physical computing” and making stuff professionally. A lot of my peers and people I look up to are in there. – Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Arduino hacker

Experimental Television, A. Frederick Collins, 1932
The very first experiments involving the transmission of images over the airways took place during the late 19^th century. By the early 20^th the technology had advanced to the point where the hobbyist could construct her own television apparatus at home. Experimental Television details the construction of camera, transmitter and receiver using electromechanical and vacuum tube technology and will give the reader great insight into electronics design in the pre-digital age. – Jake van Slatt, steampunk maker

Farm Show
An ad-free newspaper filled with examples of rural ingenuity: “Portable butchering table speeds poultry processing”; “New trap kills, then conceals dead flies”; “Simple homemade hand-powered milker”; “Portraits drawn from cremated ashes.” It’s like Boing Boing for farmers! – Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of MAKE

Forrest Mims’s Electronics
Great for hobbyists, Mims’s books were sold in Radio Shack back when they sold radios. They teach from the ground up, from electrons to resistors to semiconductors to dozens of example circuits. – Limor “LadyAda” Fried, winner of the EFF’s Pioneer Awarf

Foxfire books
If you can do it by hand, it’s covered in one of these volumes – Rose White

Created by a teacher who decided that the curriculum sucked and he would just get his students to document their parents and grandparents making wisdom, this book series is a must read. If they are out of print, get them on eBay. Some are available for free download. – Bre Pettis, hacker and maker and teacher

Getting Started in Electronics, by Forrest M. Mims, III
Mention this book to any hardware hacker who came of age in the ’80s (when this book first appeared on Radio Shack shelves) and you’re likely to get “I’m not worthy” bowing and head-bobbing. Legions of us learned from this friendly, fun, entirely accessible, and entirely hand-drawn (on graph paper), book. Slightly outdated in spots, most of its coverage of basic electronics theory and through-hole discrete components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, LEDs) is still relevant. – Gareth Branwyn, senior editor at MAKE and runs the Make: Online website

Grainger catalog
Along with McMaster-Carr, Grainger is the ultimate industrial hardware catalog. More than a simple listing of products available for purchase, the Grainger catalog is packed with technical information on forgotten skills like measuring ball bearings. – Mister Jalopy,: mechanic, maker, hot rodder, laundromat owner

The Jameco catalog
Electronic parts, almost as good as Mouser! – Phil Torrone, senior editor, MAKE

Lindsay’s Books, catalog
Over the years Lindsay has amassed a large collection of out of print technical books from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Many of these texts describe practices that are long obsolete in industry but are ideally suited to the lone garage tinkerer. Others were published long ago as handbooks for the young tradesperson newly apprentice in a field such as boiler construction or machining and thus give excellent and practical overviews of those occupations and technologies. – Jake van Slatt, steampunk maker

Modern Mechanix/Mechanix Illustrated
Of all the handy heyday magazines, Modern Mechanix was the most unabashedly ambitious with articles like “Build Your Own Helicopter.” – Mister Jalopy,: mechanic, maker, hot rodder, laundromat owner

McMaster-Carr catalog
From sheets of acrylic to fittings for a compressor. – Phil Torrone, senior editor, MAKE

Porn for mechanical engineers, MSC catalog is like Playboy. If you are into that kind of thing, there’s always the All Metric Small Parts catalog. My favourite catalog of all time however is the Melles Griot or the New Focus. I can’t remember which, but one of these optics catalogs has basically an optics text book in the first dozen pages. – Saul Griffith, of Other Lab, 323D, Energy Literacy, Wattz On, and Howtoons

Mouser, parts, parts and parts
If it’s made, it’s in here. – Phil Torrone, senior editor, MAKE

Radio Spares Catalog
Kind of a ridiculous thing to suggest, but the catalog is more easy to browse than their website. It comes in a carboard box and includes four separate sections. Think of it as buying the Encyclopedia Electronica :) – Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Arduino hacker

The Whole Earth Catalog
You’ll need to find a used/rare book-dealer to get these, or check them out at your library, but they’re worth it. The original “access to tools and ideas” texts, the oversized WECs have provided me with more hours of fun, aspiration, daydreams and inspirations than any other reading material. From pit latrines and yurts to solar power and food-driers, these were the original off-the-grid manuals for people who wanted to do anything and everything for themselves. – Cory Doctorow, author of Makers

These were like the web between covers, or like a printed version of Boing Boing! Nearly 40 years old, these are absolutely worth finding and reading. – Rose White

Fiction:

1632, by Eric Flint
The West Virginian town of Grantville is transplanted in both time and space to the German countryside of 1632. Faced with war, political machinations, and limited resources—but all of the ingenuity of a modern farming and mining community—the citizens
of Grantville must reinvent and reenact the industrial revolution to survive. – Jake van Slatt, steampunk maker

Masterman Ready, by Captain Marryat
Wonderfully didactic 19^th century learn-how-to-make-in-order-to-survive naval lost-on-desert-island story. My mother read this when she was 10 or 12 and for my entire life recommended that I read it and would love it. I finally did at age 30-something. It was great, and I loved it, but I should have read it the first time she asked, when I was 10 or 12. – Saul Griffith, of Other Lab, 323D, Energy Literacy, Wattz On, and Howtoons

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
If the skull mounted gun implants don’t blow your mind, the on-site manufacturing machines that are in everyone’s house in this book will. – Bre Pettis, hacker and maker and teacher

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, by Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein’s legendary young adult novel—written for the Scouts—chronicles the adventures of Chet, who refurbishes a surplus space-suit and finds himself on a galactic adventure. Chet’s plucky gumption convinced the 11-year-old me that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t fix, refurb, or build with enough attention and skull-sweat. Heinlein was at his best when writing for young people, and Spacesuit is the top of the pile. – Cory Doctorow, author of Makers

Makers, by Cory Doctorow
Read it and then live the dream of personal fabrication and decentralized innovation. – Bre Pettis, hacker and maker and teacher

My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George
An early influence in my childhood, My Side of the Mountain is about a boy who leaves home in New York to live in the Catskill Mountains. Using boy scout style survival skills, he builds a shelter carved into a large stump, learns to make his own clothes from the hide of deer that he hunts, and trains a peregrine falcon to hunt small animals for food. Though as a city dweller he starts off with very little in the way of survival skills, he acquires the knowledge that he needs through books in the library of a local town, people he meets, and a good deal of trial and error. – Noah Beasley, industrial design student and maker

Arduino:

Getting Started with Arduino, Massimo Banzi
My business partner and co-founder of the Arduino project wrote this and if you’re starting out in the world of electronics, this is great because the examples use very friendly lined drawings and are really accessible for creative people and designers. – Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Arduino hacker

Developed for artists and tinkerers without much electronics experience, the open source Arduino is a versatile microcontroller that can give your projects the ability to sense and act on the world around it. This short book is a terrific introduction for people who know nothing about electronics or programming. – Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of MAKE

This slim guide, written by one of the co-creators of Arduino, is deceptive in its size. It outlines a whole maker philosophy, explains
the origins of the insanely-popular Arduino open source microcontroller (designed by and for artists!), and brings you gently into the world of Arduino hardware and programming. Any tech tome that reproduces a page from the ’70s punk zine, Sniffin’ Glue (showing the three basic chords needed to play punk rock, with the caption: Now go start a band!), gets my vote! – Gareth Branwyn, senior editor at MAKE and runs the Make: Online website

Makers Book Recommendation Index

1632, Eric Flint

Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots, by Gareth Branwyn

The Amateur Craftsman’s Cyclopedia of Things to Make

The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications

The Art of Electronics, by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, by Emmanuel Goldstein

The Best of MAKE

The Boy Mechanic, original edition, 1913.

The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Clifford Stoll

Design for Manufacturability Handbook, by James G. Bralla

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson