Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering
Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering by Henry Petroski is a collection of essays published by Knopf on December 29, 1997. This first edition, comprising 239 pages, explores the significant impact of engineers in shaping our environment through various projects, both monumental and everyday. Petroski delves into notable engineering feats such as the English Channel tunnel and the Panama Canal, while also profiling influential figures like Charles Steinmetz and Henry Martyn Robert.
In this work, readers will find a blend of informative insights and engaging narratives that highlight the complexities of engineering design and civil engineering. Petroski examines the interplay between success and failure in engineering, illustrating how setbacks can lead to innovation. Through accessible explanations, he discusses fundamental engineering principles using relatable examples, making the subject approachable for a wide audience. This edition invites readers to appreciate the contributions of engineers and the intricate processes behind the structures that define our world.
Official synopsis Publisher
This collection of informative and pleasurable essays by Henry Petroski elucidates the role of engineers in shaping our environment in countless ways, big and small.
In Remaking the World Petroski gravitates this time, perhaps, toward the big: the English Channel tunnel, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the QE2, and the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, now the tallest buildings in the world. He profiles Charles Steinmetz, the genius of the General Electric Company; Henry Martyn Robert, a military engineer who created Robert’s Rules of Order; and James Nasmyth, the Scotsman whose machine tools helped shape nineteenth-century ocean and rail transportation. Petroski sifts through the fossils of technology for cautionary tales and remarkable twists of fortune, and reminds us that failure is often a necessary step on the path to new discoveries. He explains soil mechanics by way of a game of “rock, scissors, paper,” and clarifies fundamental principles of engineering through the spokes of a Ferris wheel.
Most of all, Henry Petroski continues to celebrate the men and women whose scrawls on the backs of envelopes have immeasurably improved our world.
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