Seven Wonders of the Industrial World

This book left me fascinated by civil engineering, which is a "wonder" in itself, given that the topic has never interested me. Cadbury's descriptions of seven man-made structures read like a collection of magazine feature articles, just longer at about 45 pages per "wonder". I picked up this book only interested in the Bell Rock Lighthouse, but I ended up reading the entire book. Even the story of the Brooklyn Bridge, which seemed uninteresting, captured me from start to finish. This is not a perfect book. Perhaps the flaws are inevitable given that the original format was television (a BBC series). Visual images might have clarified some of the complex building processes that Cadbury's writing simply did not. Also, although I liked her portraits of the leaders behind each "wonder," I thought her descriptions of the thousands of common workers and their lives were incomplete. If anything, this book will whet your appetite to read a more comprehensive history of a particular "wonder".