Beyond Engineering: Essays and Other Attempts to Figure Without Equations

Petroski, Henry

ISBN 10: 0312077858 / ISBN 13: 9780312077853

Published by St Martins Pr, 1986

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Beyond Engineering: Essays and Other Attempts to Figure Without Equations
• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication Date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312077858
• ISBN 13: 9780312077853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Essays discuss libraries, art, computers, engineering students, time, books, reading, baseball cards, the federal budget, Christmas, and the metric system

Reviews

Coming off a fine first book ( To Engineer Is Human , LJ 9/1/85), Petroski offers a collection of previously published essays. The author, a professor of engineering, apparently aims to bridge the space between technology and the nontechnical layperson. His method is to write about ordinary things with a not-so-subtle technical twist. Thus, in discussing book dust jackets, he tells of measuring their thickness to determine how many books they might displace on a shelf. In another piece he belabors the fact that digital watches identify 12 noon as A.M. or P.M. and not, correctly, as M for meridiem. Petroski writes clearly and engagingly. But in the present work the ideas are too often obvious, stale, or irrelevant, and the collection just doesn't seem to have much point. Daniel LaRossa, Connetquot P.L., Bohemia, N.Y.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.