One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw

A fascinating history of one humankind's simplest but most essential tools traces the history of the screwdriver from a sketch in da Vinci's pad to a later patent and mass production. By the author of A Clearing in the Distance.

Witold Rybczynski, born in Edinburgh, raised in Canada, and currently living in Philadelphia, is the Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written on architecture and urbanism for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Slate, and is the author of the critically acclaimed Home and the A Clearing in the Distance, a biography of frederick Law Olmsted, for which he was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. He is the recipient of the National Building Museum’s 2007 Vincent Scully Prize.