I hadn't admitted it yet, but I put the book down after 2 chapters because I just felt there was something wrong in there somewhere... but I didn't have range of reading experience to nail down what was bugging me. Thanks for skinning it, gutting it, and hanging the entrails on the wall so I could see the whole thing... In short, he is making the case that career instability is someone just gathering a broad set of tools that are uniquely suited to the role the Range-meister finally lands... rather than being intellectually honest about the person just grasping at anything within reach to avoid going down the swirling maw... ... Epstein wants to pretend that renegades are renegades by choice, rather than strivers who need to eat ...
It's worse than that, though. He's actively arguing against expertise. He's saying you're better at your job if you know a little about a lot than if you know a lot about a little. It was the professional expertise section that did it for me. First off, whoa nobody has ever thought to apply a concrete agitator to cleaning up oil spills. ORLY. I was unaware "cleaning up oil spills" was a common and well-structured avocation. Then somehow he implies that "range" is what led a patent attorney used to working with organic chemicals to discover a novel way of making an organic chemical because - wait for it - he's an attorney. Then he went as far as arguing that amateurs were better at predicting the fall of the Soviet Union than the professionals. Stakes for an amateur failing to correctly understand the Soviet Union? 0 Stakes for a professional failing to correctly understand the Soviet Union?