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"Petroski has an inquisitive mind, and he is a fine writer. . . . [He] takes us on a lively tour of engineers, their creations and their necessary turns of mind." --Los Angeles Times

From the Ferris wheel to the integrated circuit, feats of engineering have changed our environment in countless ways, big and small. In Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, Duke University's Henry Petroski focuses on the big: Malaysia's 1,482-foot Petronas Towers as well as the Panama Canal, a cut through the continental divide that required the excavation of 311 million cubic yards of earth.
Remaking the World tells the stories behind the man-made wonders of the world, from squabbles over the naming of the Hoover Dam to the effects the Titanic disaster had on the engineering community of 1912. Here, too, are the stories of the
personalities behind the wonders, from the jaunty Isambard Kingdom Brunel, designer of nineteenth-century transatlantic steamships, to Charles Steinmetz, oddball genius of the General Electric Company, whose office of preference was a battered twelve-foot canoe. Spirited and absorbing, Remaking the World is a celebration of the creative instinct and of the men and women whose inspirations have immeasurably improved our world.

"Petroski [is] America's poet laureate of technology. . . . Remaking the World is another fine book." --Houston Chronicle

"Remaking the World really is an adventure in engineering."
--San Diego Union-Tribune

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Remaking the world and ourselves

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Perhaps because they have become so good that they are taken for granted, engineers don't get the respect they used to and still deserve. It was different in the 19th century, when it was an open question whether the latest railroad, bridge or tunnel would work. Many didn't. The occasional collapse of a highway bridge in the Twin Cities today is, by 19th century standards, small potatoes. Professor Henry Petroski of Duke University made a reputation by writing about engineering catastrophes, but in these 19 essays, most originally published in American Scientist in the early 1990s, he concentrates on successes: the Channel Tunnel, the Ferris Wheel and several others. The tone is mildly didactic. Petroski has spent his career not only unveiling the mysteries of engineering to the non-engineers but trying to get the P.E.s to appreciate the beauty, drama and social significance of their own profession. Although many of the essays are about well-known projects, like the Hoover Dam, Petroski illuminates some of the lesser known aspects of them. For me, the most interesting essays were not the ones about built projects, however, but about what might be called byways of engineering. Petroski reveals a scandal about the Nobel Prizes (that the founder, Alfred Nobel, an engineer, seems to have intended that engineers be eligible, a wish that was scotched by academics) and about the career of the man behind Robert's Rules of Order (an American, not, as I had assumed, an Englishman). Henry Martyn Robert wrote his rules because of the difficulties he had endured during meetings about public projects he ran for the Army Corps of Engineers. Having sat through many similar meetings, I can relate, and while Robert's Rules have been useful in many venues, those kinds of meetings still tend to be unpleasant. Well, it's easier to engineer a bridge than a crowd, and Petroski's last essay, on the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, takes us to a place where the two converge. I'd say his optimistic approach there has not been validated by experience, but it wasn't the engineering that failed.

logistic and supportability issues	Customer Rating:
In Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, Henry Petroski writes about many man-made wonders of the world. Most intersting to me was the discussion on the logistic and supportability issues surrounding the design and development of the Panama Canal. Great book!

A Literary Disaster

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Henry petroski's Remaking the World is one of the most poorly-written books I have come across in years. The author purports to regale the reader with "adventures in engineering," yet the few actual case histories of engineering projects are presented almost as afterthoughts. The first third of the book is devoted to the Engineer's thought process, supposedly a mysterious and arcane pursuit far beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. We are led to believe that it is almost superhuman to actually lose sleep over an engineering problem, and that only another engineer can even begin to comprehend the complexities of the engineer's magnificent mind. In fact engineering is largely the practical application of common sense, tempered by extensive training and strong understanding of underlying theory. We are then led on a tour of some of the engineering marvels of the past century, including Ferris' great Wheel, the Panama Canal, and the Petronas towers. However, each short vignette falls short of the heroic level the book repeatedly attempts and fails to reach. The discussion of the Ferris Wheel concludes that the only unique factor raising the Wheel to greatness is its sheer size, but the author neglects to even mention its diameter. The chapter on the Hoover Dam discusses at length the cross-sectional structure of the dam, invisible from photographs, but fails to provide a single sketch. The chapter on Soil Mechanics is interpolated between a discussion of the painting "Men of Progress" and a section entitled "Is Technology Wired." There is no purpose to its placement, or even to its existence. It remains, like much of the book, a story in search of a purpose. The final chapter of the book is a discussion of the construction of the Petronas Towers. While the chapter itself is on topic and addresses the sociopolitical context of the Towers' construction, it concludes the book abruptly, leaving the reader expecting some sort of final chapter tying the various stories together. In sum, this book is poorly organized, poorly written and totally lacking in overall theme. One feels a certain pity for the students of Civil Engineering unfortunate enough to have been subjected to Professor Petroski's lecture courses.

For Petroski Fans Only

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This is a collection of articles written for Petrowski's monthly column in American Scientist magazine. Many are brief biographies of 19th-century engineers; a (very) few look (very) briefly at particular pieces of historical engineering (an article on the Ferris wheel is probably the best); others are ruminations on such hazards of the engineering practice as the stress that keeps them up at night and their failure to be awarded Nobel prizes. These seem quite satisfactory articles for a magazine column but they are slender stuff for a book. And Petroski's tendency to return to the same subjects, pardonable in a monthly column, becomes repetitive when the columns are collected. All but die-hard Petroski fans can skip this one

Not just for engineers	Customer Rating:
... but I'm getting a copy for my Dad the engineer. I enjoyed this despite my very soft background in the hard sciences: an English degree. Petroski sometimes leads you down a road with an abrupt ending, but most times it's a pleasant journey and he leads the reader around a few curves, too.