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A review by carrix2
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski
3.0
This book would be a great resource for engineering students, as it provides a basis for studying failures to prevent failure in the future. The examples are specific to structural engineering, but the concepts could be applied to any discipline.
I admit, I was assigned to read this book when I was in engineering school in 2005 and never did. I finally pulled it off my shelf and read it in 2021 and found it was drastically out of date even when it was first assigned. In this book, the most exciting and advanced form of technology is the Speak & Spell. The most devastating structural failure is the walkways of the Kansas City Regency Hotel. Granted, that was devastating, but I'm sure we could draw many lessons from the Twin Towers, Oklahoma City bombing, and even the very recent collapse of an apartment building in Florida. Not only that, but the technology we use to test and evaluate structures and materials have come so far!
Being the mid-19080s, the author is not overly comfortable with the "digital slide rule" (calculator) and does not trust computers at all. "While the computer can be used very quickly as a data clerk, it cannot be used very quickly to analyze engineering problems." I understand his stance for that time period, but it's another way the book is not relatable today.
I'm not sure this book would be interesting to the lay person. It is quite dry and has a definite "textbook" feel. I'm not sure I took anything from it, except some details about engineering failures I didn't know.
I admit, I was assigned to read this book when I was in engineering school in 2005 and never did. I finally pulled it off my shelf and read it in 2021 and found it was drastically out of date even when it was first assigned. In this book, the most exciting and advanced form of technology is the Speak & Spell. The most devastating structural failure is the walkways of the Kansas City Regency Hotel. Granted, that was devastating, but I'm sure we could draw many lessons from the Twin Towers, Oklahoma City bombing, and even the very recent collapse of an apartment building in Florida. Not only that, but the technology we use to test and evaluate structures and materials have come so far!
Being the mid-19080s, the author is not overly comfortable with the "digital slide rule" (calculator) and does not trust computers at all. "While the computer can be used very quickly as a data clerk, it cannot be used very quickly to analyze engineering problems." I understand his stance for that time period, but it's another way the book is not relatable today.
I'm not sure this book would be interesting to the lay person. It is quite dry and has a definite "textbook" feel. I'm not sure I took anything from it, except some details about engineering failures I didn't know.