In April 2020 I published my first book. It’s called ‘You Don’t Know Jack! Why the Jack of All Trades Triumphs in the Modern World.’ It was a long time in gestation, roughly 2015 to 2018, a long time in a fruitless search for an agent and a publisher, roughly 2018 to 2019, and a long time in design, layout and self-publishing (even with the help of a gifted and endlessly patient designer and an indulgent and thoughtful friend-reviewer).
Throughout this period, I regularly researched the web for other books in the same vein. There were precious few, if any. I was convinced I was onto something new and different, and therefore important. I was wrong. Maybe the candidate agents and publishers were right to turn it down. A half-full guy would call sales of the book modest. But, I reasoned, the book had merit, would help people and was finally out there.
In August 2025, while I was thinking about a companion booklet to my original ‘JOAT’ effort, I was scanning my daily Amazon email of 99p ebook deals. Lo and Behold, there was a book by a David Epstein in a striking snot-green, entitled ‘Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World’.
My first thought was, ‘Bugger me, that’s almost word-for-word my title and story, I’ve been ripped off!’. My second thought was to buy the book and check when it was written. It was published in 2019. Even the 2020 afterword was probably published before You Don’t Know Jack! hit the virtual shelves. How could I have missed a highly pertinent number-1 US bestseller hiding from me in plain sight?
Having read this excellent piece of work from end to end, I can say that it’s incredibly authoritative, insightful and worthwhile. Is it better than mine? Yes, I think so. Does it replace the need to read mine? No, I don’t think so. The main difference between the two books is the research base. When I think about people in any walk of life, around 1% are the leaders in their field, while the rest of us are in the 99%.
Range – like almost all books in the genre – focuses on the 1%; how people became the best at something by exposing themselves to a variety of experiences rather than a deep focus on that one thing. All the examples are of people who got to the top of the tree.
You Don’t Know Jack! is fundamentally different in that the research base is me – an ordinary nobody – and the audience is the 99% of us that will never make it to the top rung on the ladder, nor do we necessarily aspire to that. Happiness and a joy in our unique journey is what drives us, not the destination of peerless achievement or primacy.
This in no way negates the tenets of Range. Far from it, in fact. Every JOAT should embrace them and their inherent variety. Each of them has valuable lessons in how we can become better versions of ourselves, over time. Interestingly, because it is peppered with examples of world-beaters and Nobel prize-winners who luxuriated under a patchwork quilt of a background, Range doesn’t really talk about the regular Joe – or should I say Jack – until the last concluding chapter. Even then, it’s advice for what we should do – or our little Jimmy or Jenny should do – to be the best of the best. So, if you aspire to be in the 1%, read Range. If you don’t, read You Don’t Know Jack!. As a footnote, Range is so thoroughly researched that I learned new stuff about the JOAT from Epstein’s afterword that I should already have known, especially after half a century specialising in generalising. I highly recommend Range. It’s a great and enjoyable book.
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