Master Amateurs

What do Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin have in common with a grassroots activist, a citizen journalist, a civil rights lawyer turned drag queen, and a Wall Street VP by day, Grammy-winning musician by night? Each of these individuals is a master amateur.

These days, self-taught innovators are rocketing past professionals in the race to define the future of work. Adaptable and resilient, these independent learners have mastered amateurism—the art of doing what one is not trained or qualified to do. As technology evolves and knowledge grows decentralized, master amateurs are cultivating the strengths of survivability and prosperity despite repeatedly starting from scratch.

As the era of the life-long career comes to an end, Master Amateurs outlines the skills and habits necessary to achieve success in the modern economy and empowers people to eschew traditional career paths in favor of self-made vocations. Using the true-life stories of contemporary and historical master amateurs, Kira Asatryan demonstrates that the workforce of the twenty-first century will be led by scrappy hustlers who fearlessly tackle that which they don’t know how to do, by just doing it.