Who’d a thunk that in this digital, information-wants-to-be-free, give-it-to-me-fast age, a giant, $30.00 coffee-table book about… well… “cool tools” would be so popular? When it arrived and I showed it to my wife, her initial reaction was, “You paid 30 bucks for a catalog? You’re pretty weird.” Then when she sat down and started thumbing through it she got it: “This is a Sears catalog! There are some nice gifts in here!”
So. A Sears catalog for big kids in the digital age. I decided to buy a copy after hearing Kevin Kelly speak about it on the Triangulation podcast.
Cool Tools is a highly curated selection of the best tools available for individuals and small groups. Tools include hand tools, maps, how-to
books, vehicles, software, specialized devices, gizmos, websites — and anything useful. Tools are selected and presented in the book if they are
the best of kind, the cheapest, or the only thing available that will do the job. This is an oversized book which reviews over 1,500 different
tools, explaining why each one is great, and what its benefits are. Indirectly the book illuminates the possibilities contained in such tools and
the whole catalog serves an education outside the classroom. The content in this book was derived from ten years of user reviews published at the
Cool Tools website, cool-tools.org.