- Hardcover: 247 pages
- Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1 edition (Jun 1985)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0312806809
- ISBN-13: 978-0312806804
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,395,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
Shortly after the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel skywalks collapsed in 1981, one of my neighbors asked me how such a thing could happen. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Shortly after the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel skywalks collapsed in 1981, one of my neighbors asked me how such a thing could happen. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Henry Petroski is an author of "popular engineering" books, the cousin to "popular science", which attempt to explain the process of engineering design to a non-specialist audience.
This book documents how successful engineering is a process of predicting and preventing failure. Several chapters offer a variety of viewpoints on the philosophy of design: engineering as hypothesis (this building will stand up) which is tested analytically or empirically; design as revision (if we change this bit it will stand up); success as foreseeing failure etc.
There are several good angles here, particularly where Petroski likens engineering design to the way in which children learn. For non-engineers, there is also useful material on factors of safety, failure by cracking and other basics.
Petroski's use of language is excellent, but as an engineer, I do find a lot of the book disappointing. Non-engineers might come away thinking they know why Tacoma Narrows collapsed, or what fatigue cracking is, but the technical reasons are at best alluded to, never properly explained. Petroski's paper-clip example for fatigue cracking is particularly poor, as it mixes in two generally unrelated issues (brittle failure and plastic strain hardening; although ultimate failure is indeed due to fatigue cracking). For technical matters, "Why Buildings Fall Down" by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori is far superior, and much better illustrated with simple and easy-to-follow diagrams.
Where Petroski succeeds is in the human processes of design engineering, but even here he is somewhat weak. He's good on the philosophy but not the reality - you couldn't read this and get any grasp on how a design engineer actually spends their day, for example.
Worth reading, but let down by its fear of the technicalities.
33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I nearly gave up around page 21 where there is, considering the author's credentials, an astonishing error. The author explains how he demonstrates metal fatigue to his classes: by bending a paper clip back and forth until it breaks. He concludes "...that, I tell the class, is failure by fatigue". Well no actually, its work hardening. In chapter 4, the author appears to confuse hypothesis and presupposition. At another point, he uses the term "stresses and strains of modern life". This is not wrong in itself but it further shakes ones confidence. Engineers tend not to use the phrase in this commonplace way because "stress" and "strain" have quite specific (and totally different) meanings in engineering. It is a bit like those war films where the radio operator says "over and out". It jars because a professional would say "over" or "out" but not both. There is more. The English is pretty bad at times ("ingeniousness" instead of "ingenuity" on page 16 and "fail-proofness" on page 44). Much of the first half came over to me as a poorly structured stream of consciousness.
The second half, for me, made it worth wading through all this; although the author still did not always follow through the thoughts that he fired off. The section on the crystal palace was fascinating, as was the story of the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate bridge in the Afterword to the Vintage edition
For me, the whole book was worth the single sentence "designed objects change the future into which they will age"; in other words new technology leads to ...new ways of doing things which leads to ...new possibilities of failure which ...were not covered in the design because people didn't do things that way then.
Not a brilliant book, and some pretty basic gaffes which are difficult to understand - but worth reading as a whole.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book has an interesting goal: To explain engineering failures. But instead of an in-depth failure analysis of the Hyatt hotel, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and buses, the reader gets the same simple ideas repeated again and again. The Hyatt hotel disaster is mentioned in detail three times before its chapter. That chapter just retells the story and adds little value or insight. This book needs better organization and more real detail and in-depth analysis.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Those who don't Learn from History are Doomed to Repeat It!
I found the book absolutely fascinating, especially since I am a mechanical engineer by education and experience. Read more
Published on 25 Aug 2008 by C. Clayton
Superb capsules of engineering triumph and tragedy
Can you help me connect with the makers of the Video by the same title......To Engineer is Human? The company is Films Inc. PMI
Brad Flack John Deere Harvester HX25187@Deere.com
Published on 19 July 1999
Too much substance for a very little product
This book left me a little dissapointed, Petroski had a full tank of gas and only drove around the block. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 1998
What every engineer and designer should know...
Why do buildings and bridges suddenly collapse, or why do airplanes fall out
of the sky ? Even though since the start of the industrial revolution the
relative number of... Read more
of the sky ? Even though since the start of the industrial revolution the
relative number of... Read more
Published on 28 Jun 1997
Why can't they build things that don't fail?
Anyone who has ever wondered why things like bridges and airplanes can't be built without falling down will find out why in this book.
A fascinating and informative book.
A fascinating and informative book.
Published on 14 Sep 1996
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
