It's fairly amusing and mostly pleasant to read some parts of WhatWouldMacGyverDo once. My plan is to read it once, let my grandsons read it, and rehome it. The anecdotes remind me of 20th century first person tales from Readers Digest or 21st century clickbait culled from Reddit. Whether it's because the editor reworked them or because he had a lot of material to choose from and managed to choose a book's worth of stories that all sounded similar, the voice doesn't vary much. They're all perky, self-deprecating, and extremely competent wordsmiths. Some describe trivial fixes ("I wore my wife's bathrobe to get our baby to take a bottle of breastmilk" -- I read that life hack in a mainstream book on parenting in the 1980s and it didn't take two pages to get to the point), some are more complex, and some are utterly pointless. The travel section is the worst, jammed with anecdotes that ... are anecdotes, but not remotely ingenious or MacGyverish. Get your friend to rush your missing passport to the airport, drink your own urine on a hike, overhear a repairman's lost walkie-talkie: really, Brendan Vaughan? And a section on romance? Only the story of the bridal suite door is remotely related to the supposed theme of the book, and the rest? Not all suitable for work, let alone junior high. I begin to question whether it actually is anything I want my grandsons to read. The chapter on evading the authorities and getting away with lawbreaking is, perhaps, even less suitable.

Before the editor lost the plot mid-book, however, there was at least one idea that could seriously help human comfort and energy conservation. Geoff Milburn, the fellow from Waterloo who invented the low-tech low-energy air conditioner, is a genius (as are most students from Waterloo, an engineering school famous for its high standards) and although I could not find his invention on UWaterloo's website at the 2006 web address in the book, I did find it on Wired dot com (and via Pinterest, on the Instructables site). https://www.wired.com/2011/07/diy-ac-heatwave/ This is something that I could and would most certainly do, the only important improvement being a way to make sure the water is reclaimed for reuse (rain barrel, drip irrigation). There's an excellent diagram in the book, too. Maybe it's a keeper after all! Or not. ( )

Cute, but only a few of the stories met my requirements for something MacGyver would do. The best one was using a knitting needle to fix a clutch. ( )

This is a really bad effort! It seems there were lots and lots of story submissions, but the editorial choices weighed witty and word smart higher than whether the story even came close to being a MacGyver. See the other reviews for other lame examples. The one that made me chuck the book was when a thirsty hiker swallowed his own pee. Yes, THAT's really clever! If I were MacGyver, I'd be blushing in embarassment at this tribute; perhaps even contemplating a slander lawsuit. ( )

I love love love MacGyver and was very excited to get this book. While all of the stories were entertaining, quite a few of them would not strictly fall under the category of "MacGyverisms". Still, a few are sheer genius and the book was a quick, entertaining read with moments of "wow, that's genius!" here and there. ( )

Uninteresting and boring stories that have nothing to do with ingenious ideas. ( )