Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering

I have been reading Dr Petroski's books for a long time. I was particularly struck by the study of the Texas A & M Bonfire collapse. I was impressed that he went beyond the "nuts and bolts" of physicial studies of materials and failure analysis. The comments on psychological factors was insightful and engaging. Highly recommended

In the push for longer bridges, taller buildings and larger-scale projects of all sizes, engineers face new challenges which go beyond physics to tackle the aesthetics and functionality of engineering itself. Henry Petroski's PUSHING THE LIMITS tells stories of daring enterprizes which envisioned engineering achievements beyond ordinary measure; from Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Bridge to China's Three Gorges Dam project. His isn't just a celebration of technological achievement either: PUSHING THE LIMITS also examines the underlying costs and problems of such projects, focusing on both design and human challenges in the process.

It's pretty clear that Mr. Petroski likes bridges. I do to. In fact I just recently drove many miles out of my way to go see the new Sundial bridge designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in Redding, California. My one complaint here would be that I'd sure like to have seen more pictures. His words are elequent, his descriptions great, but remember the bit about picture and a thousand words. Bridges take up about half the book. then he goes on to describe an eclectic collection of engineering projects that don't quite fit together but which make nice little essays of their own. Interesting enough, a couple of his essays cover engineering projects that failed. In his interestingly named Vanities of the Bonfire, he gives an engineering report of the collapse of the stack of logs that made up the 1999 bonfire at Texas A & M. It would be very amusing except that it killed a dozen people and injured several more. Consistent with todays law suit environment, it is now estimated that a new bonfire would cost between one and one and a half million dollars.

This book is a worthwhile addition to Petroski's accounts of adventures in engineering. His many essays on the possibilities of gutsy achievement in large scale engineering is leavened by cautionary tales of overconfidence and hubris. His stories are especially enlivened by his lacing some of his personal experiences with encountering the structures with erudite discussions of the technical challenges faced by the engineers and sometimes lyrical peans to the beauty of the artifacts they had created. I especially appreciated his chapter on his visit to the Three Gorges--a place I hope to visit soon. And the one about London's Millennium Bridge and the Wheel was tops too. On the other hand, it is apparent that the book is rather unevenly done. It is a collection of essays that do not tie together very well. The chapter on fuel cells near the end of the book seems quite out of place and pedantic to boot. And while the book has 28 illustrations, most of them are pretty cheesy--it really needs more and better pictures. But overall, I enjoyed the book and I'll be using it to enhance my visits to some of the same places that he describes so well.