Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities

COOL TOOLS is a sprawling compilation of useful tool reviews that author Kevin Kelly and a thousand contributors wrote over a 10-year period on Kelly's blog of the same name. Every tool in this massive (472 pages, 11" x 14") collection was recommended by an avid tool user who actually used the tool. Every tool in COOL TOOLS is either the best, the cheapest, or the only thing that works. A builder for 40 years, I thought I knew a bit about tools. Not anymore. Kelly and his crew have put together the most exhaustive, inventive and mind-bending selection of stuff I've ever seen. For starters, their definition of tools encompasses more or less every human activity on earth. So in addition to hand jacks that can raise 7000 lbs., the Teeny Turner (a pocket sized driver), portable band saws, and laser measuring tools, you can find the best source on how to buy a car cheaply, make a low-budget movies, brew your own beer, rear an optimistic child, design a logo, win a fight, soak in feral (!) hot springs, learn to swim efficiently, prepare for a natural disaster, vagabond the world, do something dangerous (and live to tell about it), run for local office and win, go solar on your roof, or (a great boon to Boomers) remember anything. This list doesn't scratch the surface of what's in COOL TOOLS and that's one of the things that makes it so irresistible--you return to it again and again. Open it at random and you experience something like being six again, with a child's sense of delight and wonder at how clever people can be and what abundance this world holds. Like the Whole Earth Catalogue from 40 years ago, COOL TOOLS might just delight and empower a new generation of people who love learning--and doing. A most remarkable book.

I had no idea how fun it would be to flip through a catalogue of things of all kinds. I got my book a few years ago so the content is probably outdated for some categories, but the general, core things should still apply. A great ”coffee table” book and conversation starter. Can be read quite casually, a LOT more engaging than some product review website. I hope this kind of product can be released and updated periodically.

This is the most exciting book I've seen in years. It's the Whole Earth Catalog come back to life in technicolor and updated for the 21st century. For 10 years, Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired Magazine, has run the Cool Tools website/blog (kk.org), with daily reviews of useful tools of every nature, and this is a compilation in book form of the best and the brightest. It's a real book that knocks the socks off any kind of electronic media; for graphic books, print on paper has still got a magic that can't be duplicated digitally. It's been sitting on the kitchen table for a week now, and every single person that comes by sits down and gets immersed in it. If you're one of the millions of Whole Earth Catalog fans from years back, you're going to love this book. If you don't know what the WEC was or about its profound impact on American culture in the 60s and 70s, check it out on Wikipedia. There must be thousands of tools here, from lightweight tents to noise cancelling earphones to the best LED flashlights to grain grinders. Computer enhancements, books, work clothes, shop tools and kitchen tools and garden tools, sports bras, ukuleles, skateboards and baby strollers -- don't get me started! And the reviews are -- ahem -- way better (more informed and in my opinion more trustworthy) than Amazon reviews. Full disclosure: I was the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog back in the day, Kevin is a friend, I've written a bunch of reviews in the book, and a number of our books at Shelter Publications are reviewed here, so I'm hardly unbiased. But if none of this were true and if I had just picked this book up out of the blue, I would love it just as much.

This book is a wonderful, worthy successor to The Whole Earth Catalog, which is its spiritual as well as literal fore-bearer. Endlessly fascinating collection of a wide-ranging array of tools and reviews and factoids and ideas; even if I never in my life plan to, say, take up tethered swimming, it's just neat to know that there is such a thing (and what the best tether is, should I ever decide to try it). Endlessly browse-worthy; the kind of book you pick up to look up one thing, and instead end up flipping through as thoughts are chained and you go "Oh, and what about..." Unfortunately, the format of the book does not lend itself well to this casual browsing. Its large format (10.8 x 13.8 inches) is, I think, in part due to its being a successor to the aforementioned Whole Earth Catalog, which was large format too. But TWEC wasn't printed in full color on heavy coated stock; it didn't weigh a ton. Or, at least, 4.4 pounds, which feels like a ton when you're reading it. There's no comfortable way to browse it except sitting at a table with it laying flat in front of you. Sitting up in a chair with the book in your lap, you have to hold it up, and the heavy pages flop down and your arms quickly tire. Sit up in bed with your knees pulled up to support the book, it slides down into your lap so that the bottoms of the pages catch on the bed covers as you turn the pages. It's the kind of book I'd like to be able to read, say, one-handed while brushing my teeth, but that's never going to happen. I'm seriously considering slitting the spine to split the book into three or more manageable chunks. And, as mentioned by others, the number of pixelated, over-enlarged photos is surprising in a book of this caliber. The publisher should either get a new photo, show it smaller, or at least invest in proper image re-sampling software to make them look better.

This book is outstanding. Once I got started reading it, I got sucked in and stayed up way too late last night. If you're reading this review, you should just go ahead and order it. It will absolutely meet your expectations, hopes and dreams. I have long been a fan of the Cool Tools blog, and I also have fond memories of the Whole Earth Catalog. Much like the Whole Earth Catalog, the reviews are so thorough and insightful that not only do they recommend specific products, but they are also so informative that you can learn from them to make your own judgments as to whether a similar product is right for you or not. The book is also filled with sidebars and tips on related subjects that are useful enough they could be their own book! At first when I opened it, I admit I was slightly disappointed to see that many (not all, maybe not even most) of the images in the book are relatively low-res downloads from the web. It's not like you're getting anything less than what's on the web, but it's distracting to see such grainy art in such a big, beautiful book. It's also just a bit too large and floppy to comfortably read in bed, alas. I worry that it may not stand up to wear and abuse very well, but only time will tell. After finishing it, those niggling complaints drop its score not from five stars to four, but from 100% to 98%. Despite that, it's still an outstanding book and I'm very happy to have it in my collection!

First off I have to warn you: Do Not get this book. In fact, just navigate away from this page because Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools has the potential to suck up your spare time, empty your wallet, and put a strain on your marriage like nothing other than perhaps a long, riotous weekend in Vegas. Still here? Well, if I haven't scared you off, let me at least provide you with my unbiased review: Basically, Cool Tools chronicles each step of the author's 10 year journey to discover the absolute best tools for every imaginable task and in every imaginable category. Upon completion of this endeavor, and with everything neatly categorized and beautifully photographed, Mr. Kelly then proceeds to provide his readers with an estimated price and an up-to-date web link so that they'll know exactly where to go and how much they'll need to drop to own the very best gadget or gizmo. This book can literally empty your wallet and suck up your day, but it'll do so by sending you on the most wondrous web-based scavenger hunts. Now if that wasn't enough, Kelly then goes on to list the very best clothes, the best foods, the best office products, the best technology, the best..........Well, you get the idea; this is THE guide to not only keeping up with the Jones' but flat out pummeling them into submission and making them your %$!@*#s. For around $30 some potential buyers may need more persuasion than this review and Amazon's LOOK INSIDE, so for those folks I suggest going over to the Kelly's html version of the book and checking out his reviews in the Category section.

PROS: A useful and worthy continuation of the Whole Earth genre. CONS: It's a Big Dumb Book. It needs a wheelchair to support its obese weight, its floppy size, and its geriatric paper format. Kelly must be a guy who can't wait for the latest printed edition of Encyclopedia Britannica to be delivered to him by forklift; did he really need to kill all those trees in order to present stuff that is best viewed on a computer screen? I keep wanting to click on an item in the book to Add to Favorites, oh but wait...paper is not clickable. I want to visit the web sites shown in the book, but oh wait - there's no clickable links. The QR codes in the book are a joke - you get to squint at a web site on your teeny cell screen instead of hitting a link on your desktop. I literally read Cool Tools while sitting at my desk with the book on my lap as I typed web links into my PC. At the least, Kelly should have married his book to his web site. In the book, every item would have had an identifying tag; the reader could type the tag into the web site and bring up the same material on the screen. The web material would be useless to someone that doesn't have the book in front of them because you need the book to see the tags. It's a fair way to protect the author's work and still make the material interactive for the reader. PREDICTION: the next iteration of this genre will come from Amazon, which has already evolved into an Encyclopedia of Things. All Amazon needs is for Bezos to realize that certain things in his world need to be called out as cultural keystones that should have communities built around them and invite folks to build those communities. CONCLUSION: I want to emphasize that this book is still a worthy continuation of the Whole Earth genre and that it is an important addition to my bookshelf. Yes, it would be nice if it had links to the Cool Tools web site, but Kelly has my thanks for bringing this book into being.

If you ever enjoyed reading the Whole Earth Catalog, read no further. Just buy this. You know why. If you are a reader of the Cool Tools blog, again, I'd say to just buy this. Yes, you've already read (or could read) much of the content on the site, but the book format (and the fact this is a hand-picked subset of the reviews from the blog) adds context and flow. You'll like curling up and paging through the oversize pages. Reviews within a category that were separated by months or years are side by side here in the book. QR codes take you directly to product pages. It is a nicely realized, physical thing. Never heard of Cool Tools blog or the WEC? Check out the Cool Tools blog to get an idea of the tone (tell us about a cool tool, one that you'd recommend to a good friend) and subjects. This is a compilation of "cool tools"--tools that represent things you either never knew existed, or an extraordinary value. (The book itself qualifies as among the coolest of tools.) The categories are wide ranging, from cooking, crafts, learning, music, family, electronics and more. There's certain to be some area of immediate interest, but half the fun is the insight into the tools of the trade of some activity you may never have considered like beekeeping or world travel on a shoestring budget. There are some images with jarringly-low resolution, a few typos here and there, but overall a very nicely done book. (Disclosure--I received an early copy because a review I contributed years ago to the site was included in the book, but I'll be ordering more copies.)