Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs

Firebrand conservative columnist, commentator, Internet entrepreneur, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin tells the fascinating, little-known stories of the inventors who have contributed to American exceptionalism and technological progress.

In July 2012, President Obama infamously proclaimed: “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Malkin wholeheartedly disagrees. Who Built That is a rousing tribute to the hidden American capitalists who pioneered everyday inventions. They’re the little big things we take for granted: bottle caps and glassware, tissue paper, flashlights, railroad signals, bridge cables, revolutionary plastics, and more.

Malkin takes readers on an eclectic journey of American capitalism, from the colonial period to the Industrial Age to the present, spotlighting awe-inspiring and little-known “tinkerpreneurs” who achieved their dreams of doing well by doing good. You’ll learn how famous patent holders Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain championed the nation’s unique system of intellectual property rights; how glass manufacturing mavericks Edward Libbey and Mike Owens defied naysayers to revolutionize food, beverage, and pharmaceutical packaging; how penniless Croatian immigrant Anthony Maglica started his $400 million Maglite flashlight business in a rented garage; and many more riveting stories that explain our country’s fertile climate for scientific advancement and entrepreneurship.

To understand who we are as people, we need to first understand what motivates America’s ordinary and extraordinary makers and risk-takers. Driven by her own experience as a second-generation beneficiary of the American Dream, Malkin skillfully and passionately rebuts collectivist orthodoxy to celebrate the engineers, mechanics, designers, artisans, and relentless tinkerers of all backgrounds who embody our nation’s spirit of self-made entrepreneurialism.