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Building
- A Carpenter's Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
A visionary carpenter shares meditations on work, creativity, and design, revealing powerful lessons on building a meaningful life through his experience constructing some of New York’s most iconic spaces.
For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you’ve never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named “Apartment of the Decade.” His projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.
Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York’s elite, before they’re camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.
Blending Ellison’s musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling, original sketches, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a life worth living, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.
This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF containing selected illustrations from the printed book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Critic reviews
“Mark Ellison is known for building beautiful rooms, but here he has crafted a gorgeous book. This cross between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Kitchen Confidential contains fascinating insights about working with your hands, the nature of talent, and how to create a meaningful life, whatever your craft is. Oh, and lots of juicy stories of pain-in-the-ass clients. Even if you aren’t handy—I can barely hang a picture frame—you’ll find this book a wonderful read.”—A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Puzzler
“Who knew Mark Ellison’s handiwork would include a book this exquisite, purposeful, absorbing? Building merits reading and rereading—it’s a book with much to teach us all.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies
“Reading this amazing book is like listening to a very wise and funny man share the best stories in the world, wound up with wisdom, craft, and hard-won philosophy, and told with such eloquence. Clearly, Ellison had this book waiting inside him for years. I’m so glad that it’s out in the world, where it will find its readers for years.”—Burkhard Bilger, author of Fatherland
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Just when Stacy Morrison thought she had it all, her husband of 10 years announced that he wanted a divorce. She was left alone with a new house that needed lots of work, a new baby who needed lots of attention, and a new job in the high-pressure world of New York publishing. Morrison had never been one to believe in fairy tales. As far as she was concerned, happy endings were the product of the kind of ambition and hard work that had propelled her to the top of her profession.
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so helpful
- By jessica ball on 11-10-15
By: Stacy Morrison
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Andy Rooney
- 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit
- By: Andy Rooney
- Narrated by: J. Paul Guimont
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Chairs. Neat people. Ugliness. War. Over six decades of intrepid reporting and elegant essays, Andy Rooney has proven a shrewd cultural analyst. Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit brings together the best of more than a half-century of work (including long-out-of-print pieces from his early years) in an unforgettable celebration of one of America’s funniest men. Like Mark Twain, Finley Peter Dunne (Mister Dooley) and Will Rogers, Andy Rooney is a classic chronicler of America, a writer for the ages.
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A good style
- By Denise L. Holtz on 11-04-16
By: Andy Rooney
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The Cubans
- Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times
- By: Anthony DePalma
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Anthony DePalma
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Cubans today, most of whom have lived their entire lives under the Castro regime, are hesitantly embracing the future. In his new book, Anthony DePalma, a veteran reporter with years of experience in Cuba, focuses on a neighborhood across the harbor from Old Havana to dramatize the optimism as well as the enormous challenges that Cubans face: a moving snapshot of Cuba with all its contradictions as the new regime opens the gate to the capitalism that Fidel railed against for so long.
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The real Cuba
- By Tinkerbell on 10-11-20
By: Anthony DePalma
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A Wild and Precious Life
- A Memoir
- By: Edie Windsor, Joshua Lyon
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Joshua Lyon
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
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🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
- By Natalia Zimnoch on 10-15-19
By: Edie Windsor, and others
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The Man in the Glass House
- Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century
- By: Mark Lamster
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A roller-coaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.
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Disappointing!
- By David G Dempsey on 07-12-19
By: Mark Lamster
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My Grandfather's Son
- A Memoir
- By: Clarence Thomas
- Narrated by: Clarence Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
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Wonderful read
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-21
By: Clarence Thomas
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The LEGO Story
- How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination
- By: Jens Andersen
- Narrated by: Peter Cross
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.
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Great book! Don't miss this
- By hgpilot - MM on 04-27-23
By: Jens Andersen
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Chronicles of a Fashion Buyer
- The Mostly True Adventures of an International Fashion Buyer
- By: Mercedes Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Mercedes Gonzalez
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Fashion is a business of smoke and mirrors, notorious for crushing the souls of most who dare to be part of the industry. Go on a global expedition with New York City-based fashion buyer, strategist, and consultant, Mercedes Gonzalez, as she learns that there is no glamour in fashion and that only cutthroat corporate espionage prevails. From politicking with blood diamond dealers and Russian kingpins to living in indigenous villages, she has relied on her street smarts and fear of her uncle in order to outwit the industry tyrants at their own game.
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Very Enagaging
- By Rainbow on 07-31-23
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I'm Possible
- Jumping into Fear and Discovering a Life of Purpose
- By: Jeremy Cowart
- Narrated by: Jeremy Cowart
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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You have potential, even if it’s hidden. You have talent, even if you’re afraid to use it. Your dreams just might change the world if you only believe the truth: I’m possible. Internationally known celebrity photographer and philanthropist Jeremy Cowart shares his powerful story of transcending the traditional, following his ideas into a life lived in the fullness of possibility.
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A must read for creatives
- By Kindle on 09-14-21
By: Jeremy Cowart
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The Contemporaries
- Travels in the 21st-Century Art World
- By: Roger White
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential audiobook offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.
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Mispronunciations Spoil This Reading!
- By Jenny Jenkins on 06-17-15
By: Roger White
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A Place of My Own
- The Architecture of Daydreams
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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With this updated edition of his earlier book, A Place of My Own, listeners can revisit the inspired, intelligent, and often hilarious story of Pollan’s realization of a room of his own—a small, wooden hut, his “shelter for daydreams” — built with his admittedly unhandy hands. Inspired by both Thoreau and Mr. Blandings, A Place of My Own not only works to convey the history and meaning of all human building, it also marks the connections between our bodies, our minds, and the natural world.
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Pollan is the master of hipster porn
- By Darwin8u on 02-28-15
By: Michael Pollan
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Permission to Dream
- By: Chris Gardner, Mim Eichler Rivas
- Narrated by: Chris Gardner
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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On a winter’s day, Chris Gardner set off with his nine-year-old granddaughter Brooke to find the harmonica of her dreams. The search sends them North “beyond the wall” into a foreboding Chicago neighborhood and, soon, on a harrowing adventure that will change both of their lives - and ours.
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Thank you, Chris Gardner, for always inspiring us to dream
- By Mellissa Dowling on 10-17-22
By: Chris Gardner, and others
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The E-Myth Enterprise
- By: Michael E. Gerber
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The E-Myth Enterprise explores the requirements that any new business must meet: the satisfaction of its four primary influencers - its employees, customers, suppliers, and investors - through four fundamental categories - visual, emotional, functional, and financial. Together these form the twin strategies every entrepreneur must use to design a business.
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Well done on your other book!
- By Nigel Bond on 10-19-09
What listeners say about Building
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-27-23
I am a reader of novels 
Book club read this book. There were some very important points about perseverance, preserving the past,  Self growth and using failure to grow. I listen to books while walking at the gym. Novels are easier to follow and keep straight.
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- cm&co
- 07-18-23
Mehh
At times the memoir was entertaining and interesting, but sometimes not. The few insites tend to be underdeveloped. This is not one I will listen to again.
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- Jeff
- 07-27-23
An ode to the author
I finished it. I’m glad it was on the short side. It was getting very old. And just for the record, I’m not an architect.
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- John Dough
- 07-15-23
Don't bother...
After the first couple chapters. which I did enjoy. This book turns into his own long winded, personal, self righteous, complaint log. All the details of his complaints of all of his past jobs, and bosses, can be heard. one chapter at a time. I cannot find anything positive, or inspiring, after the first 2 or 3 chapters.
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- Rebecca
- 07-29-23
If you’re an architect, stay away from this book - there are already multiple other ways you’re undervalued
First, the salvageable: one persistent message in this book was to not let fear dictate your work. I agree and I could use some encouragement to fight the urge to use fear as an excuse to avoid doing my best or take on challenging work myself.
The balance of the book is a disorganized, rambling narrative of the author’s life and attempts at life lessons. “Hard work pays off” and “practice makes perfect” are good mantras but they are not new and have been expressed more interestingly and eloquently elsewhere.
Full disclosure: I am an architect - not famous, not even that talented, honestly - decent, at best. Admittedly, this will influence my appreciation - or lack thereof - of this book. I do take pride in doing by best in providing the most practical approach to clients - still meeting their needs and expectations in a pleasing presentation. Sounds simple, but it takes talent, patience, time, effort and pain. It is worth it, in the end.
I’m also guilty of judging others in the design and construction arena - dealing with owners, engineers/ consultants, product salespeople, regulatory agencies, inspectors, contractors, and so on, is never easy - often frustrating, actually. To minimize and oversimplify the architecture profession as lacking talent and knowledge of construction process as well as, mainly, being driven by ego, is not only unfair, but plain uninformed and offensive. I know a thing or two about construction methods and have, personally, met some architects who know a lot more and could teach a masterclass in constructibility.
Once in a while, I need to remind myself that everyone in the design and construction process has, likely, had a challenging journey, deals their own obstacles, and is, hopefully, doing their best to contribute constructively to complete the project.
As much as you think the architect has no concept of constructibility, I have, at times, reproached contractors for not understanding plans and, more often, for trying to dodge responsibility for what they bid in an attempt to sneak in a change order. I often succumb to accuse that if you didn’t fully understand the plans, you should have asked for clarification prior to providing a proposal (which should mean you agree to provide the represented design at the proposed price with your possessed ability). Sending a change order proposal during construction - because lack of attention prior to bid - helps nobody.
In the end, all participants are required. The more collaborative we are, the better the experience. The more judgmental and blaming, the worse. I, myself have a lot to learn still.
Perhaps my expectations were misguided in thinking this book would be more of an inspirational description of craft and collaboration. The best, most attractive, most practical projects require a rare symbiosis. Judging and blaming, the most common path taken, does not make that possible.
Know this: architects are generally tasked with immense responsibility at less than adequate compensation. We are usually undervalued and unfairly criticized (even amongst ourselves). Take that as whining, if you like - after all, it’s coming from an architect. Last thing we need is a book that oversimplifies our profession.
That was my rant as an architect.
For the rest, the book is not substantive, the stories, surely meaningful to the author, are not that interesting, let alone inspirational. It was difficult to finish - I like to finish what I start, painful as it sometimes is.
Would not recommend in general.
By Miguel (not Rebecca)
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