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To Engineer Is Human

The Role of Failure in Successful Design

Author Henry Petroski
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Paperback
$19.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
5.1"W x 7.9"H x 0.6"D  
On sale Mar 31, 1992 | 272 Pages | 9780679734161
Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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Petroski sites some great disasters--the 1980s collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel, the twisting apart of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940, and a water lily being the inspiration of the Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering--as case studies in a work that looks at our deepest notions of progress and perfection, tracing the fine connection between the quantifiable realm of science and the chaotic realities of everyday life.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The author of more than 15 books, he has received grants from the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Humanities Center. View titles by Henry Petroski
"Reading Petroski's fine book is not only a delight, it is a necessity." --Houston Chronicle

"Serious, amusing, probing, sometimes frightening, and always literate." --Los Angeles Times 

About

Petroski sites some great disasters--the 1980s collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel, the twisting apart of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940, and a water lily being the inspiration of the Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering--as case studies in a work that looks at our deepest notions of progress and perfection, tracing the fine connection between the quantifiable realm of science and the chaotic realities of everyday life.

Author

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The author of more than 15 books, he has received grants from the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Humanities Center. View titles by Henry Petroski

Praise

"Reading Petroski's fine book is not only a delight, it is a necessity." --Houston Chronicle

"Serious, amusing, probing, sometimes frightening, and always literate." --Los Angeles Times 

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