Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering by Henry Petroski (PDF)

Description

Here are two dozen tales in the grand adventure of engineering from the Henry Petroski, who has been called America’s poet laureate of technology. Pushing the Limits celebrates some of the largest things we have created–bridges, dams, buildings–and provides a startling new vision of engineering’s past, its present, and its future. Along the way it highlights our greatest successes, like London’s Tower Bridge; our most ambitious projects, like China’s Three Gorges Dam; our most embarrassing moments, like the wobbly Millennium Bridge in London; and our greatest failures, like the collapse of the twin towers on September 11. Throughout, Petroski provides fascinating and provocative insights into the world of technology with his trademark erudition and enthusiasm for the subject.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Engineers in particular will find this a fascinating journey with some of engineer’s most notable accomplishments. A few more drawings and illustrations would have been appreciated . Sometimes scale was hard to appreciate. All in all a good read.

⭐Book arrived in good condition and promptly, as promised.

⭐I’ve read two (Making the World and Small Things Considered) of Petroski’s other books and loved them both. This I snagged mainly because of the cover wanting to read about the Guggenhiem Museum in Bilbao. Sadly, too much of this book is basically on bridges.Nothing wrong with that but they are not my thing when it comes to engineering. The other half of the book covers such fascinating areas as the aforementioned in Bilbao, the Dorton Arena (little known but very early precussor to the domed stadiums of the ’70s and ’80s) and the Three Gorges Dam in China.The only bridge story that really grabbed me was the ancient Britannia Bridge because of the construction methods used that are not in vogue today (mainly brick). I’m willing to give the half of the book that revolves around bridges a second read but you really do have to be into bridges in a big way to want this book. My advice–borrow it from a library first, if you’re not a bridge afficiando.

⭐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.

⭐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

⭐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.

⭐Well readable and interesting book.

⭐I’ve read two (Making the World and Small Things Considered) of Petroski’s other books and loved them both. This I snagged mainly because of the cover wanting to read about the Guggenhiem Museum in Bilbao. Sadly, too much of this book is basically on bridges.Nothing wrong with that but they are not my thing when it comes to engineering. The other half of the book covers such fascinating areas as the aforementioned in Bilbao, the Dorton Arena (little known but very early precussor to the domed stadiums of the ’70s and ’80s) and the Three Gorges Dam in China.The only bridge story that really grabbed me was the ancient Britannia Bridge because of the construction methods used that are not in vogue today (mainly brick). I’m willing to give the half of the book that revolves around bridges a second read but you really do have to be into bridges in a big way to want this book. My advice–borrow it from a library first, if you’re not a bridge afficiando.

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