Synopses & Reviews
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.
About the Author
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of eleven previous books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Table of Contents
Preface BRIDGES
Art in Iron and Steel
Bridges of America
Benjamin Franklin Bridge
Floating Bridges
Confederation Bridge
Pont de Normandie
Britannia Bridge
Tower Bridge
Drawing Bridges
An Eye-Opening Bridge
Millennium Legacies
Broken Bridges
New and Future Bridges
AND OTHER THINGS
Dorton Arena
Bilbao
Santiago Calatrava
Fazlur Khan
The Fall of Skyscrapers
Vanities of the Bonfire
St. Francis Dam
Three Gorges Dam
Fuel Cells
Engineers Dreams
Engineers Achievements
Acknowledgments and Bibliography
List of Illustrations and Credits
Index
Tech Q&A
Read the Tech Q&A with Henry Petroski