How to Build Impossible Things

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Wildly irreverent and beautifully warm, this is a story about practice, competence and failure, told through tales in a world most of us never see.

'Life is worth regular examination. I have found a great deal of meaning in learning to make things. Each of us has tidbits of understanding that others might appreciate were we to share them. As a carpenter building high-end homes for New York City's richest, I work on multi-million dollar projects every day. People come to me when they want the impossible. Most are ill conceived; many are inadvisable, some are downright dangerous. But when I'm able to craft something glorious, it's magic. Yet in every project, without fail, things go wrong.

Glamour, luxury and refinement are products of a flawed, human process, of missed deadlines, overrun budgets, heated tantrums and scrapped blueprints. Throughout my career I have observed, erred, learned, finessed, apologised, and resisted the urge to say I told you so. I offer these tales from the trade in the hope that others might find them amusing, instructive and inspirational. There are many good reasons to work. Here are a few of them.'

©2023 Mark Ellison (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • Like sitting in a room with Mark and hearing the best stories in the world, wound up with wisdom, craft, and hard-won philosophy

    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

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