Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 7 and up. This captivating set of five videos and a companion book explores and pays tribute to some of the world's most impressive architecture and engineering feats. Each of the five videos, hosted and narrated by David Macaulay, focuses on a particular type of structure--dams, skyscrapers, domes, tunnels, and bridges--highlighting international examples of each, from Egypt's Aswan Dam and French cathedrals to Houston's Astrodome and Boston's "Big Dig" tunnel project. Filmed on location and using detailed historical and modern footage and stills, dramatic reenactments, animation, and Macaulay's own on-camera sketches, each segment brings the construction story vividly to life. Macaulay makes the technical elements easily understood as he describes, in exciting human stories, the builders' historical, cultural, environmental, and engineering concerns. In his companion book, Macaulay narrows his focus to the "nuts and bolts" of each structure. In signature sketches and succinct, engaging text, he deconstructs the design and engineering features that make each of the domes, tunnels, skyscrapers, bridges, and dams so exemplary. As usual, Macaulay knows just which view is required--cross section, detail study, elevation--to present the material so that it's easy to understand and appealing to readers. He even includes some subtle humor, such as a pair of cartoon mice on the Chunnel's tracks that note that cheese will become fromage when they reach the end. The videos and the book can easily be used independently, but together they offer a highly entertaining, instructive glimpse at some of construction's greatest stories, giving young people and adults the skills to look more closely at the structures around them. --Gillian Engberg
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This companion to the PBS series of the same name offers a fascinating peek at the inner workings of bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, domes and dams. In a starred review, PW wrote, "If ever a book were destined to inspire a future generation of engineers and designers, it would be this volume." All ages. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4 Up-In this series about the biggest of all structures (bridges, tunnels, dams, skyscrapers, and domes), David Macaulay represents the little kid in all of usÄthe one who can't pass up a construction site without stopping to gaze through the fence. There he is, wearing a hardhat, high up on a window-washer's platform outside a Manhattan skyscraper, under the English Channel in the "Chunnel," on top of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Aswan High Dam. He's ready at a moment's notice to pull out his sketch pad and do a quick drawing to demonstrate how the forces of compression and tension hold a dome together, or keep a suspension bridge from falling into the water. He moves from Japan to Malaysia to Brazil to England to the United States to show viewers not only the biggest of big structures, but also their prototypes: Roman aqueducts and bridges, the Pantheon, the medieval towers of San Gimignano, the 4500-year-old ruins of the Igaicu Falls dam on the Nile River. Macaulay's enthusiasm for his subjects is infectious. His explanations are simple but satisfying, and his examples are varied and interesting. What's more, he is adept at bringing in the human stories that give life to these massive structures of steel and stone. Each video ends with a "Building Small" segment, in which Kenny and Caroline from the PBS series Zoom challenge viewers to build a model of the structure just described. For example in Domes, Kenny and Caroline build a geodesic dome out of newspaper and masking tapeÄand when it's done, it's strong enough to hold up four or five heavy reference books. The accompanying 40-page activity guide is packed with projects suitable for individuals and entire classes, from fourth grade on up.-Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, Morgan Hill, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) This sampling of pivotal architectural landmarks-bridges, tunnels, dams, domes, and skyscrapers, published as a companion to the author's PBS series of the same title-confirms that David Macaulay has always been intrigued at least as much by the engineering involved in such projects as by their aesthetic qualities. Bridges make an admirable starting point (""they are in a sense three-dimensional diagrams of the work they do""), with Rome's ancient stone Ponte Fabrico first to demonstrate the interaction between available technology and materials, function and dimensions, and the various balances between compression, tension, and load, concepts the author follows throughout. His explanations are lucid and detailed, and the progressions from one architectural solution to others of increasing complexity (e.g., eight domes ranging from the Pantheon to the Astrodome) implicitly reveal a little social history along with technological developments. But although the TV version, according to Macaulay, includes ""the larger historical, social, and environmental issues associated with the building of big things,"" he is contented, here, to focus on ""nuts and bolts,"" discussing each structure as the result of ""planning and design problems that had to be solved and the solutions that were eventually built,...each...the result of a logical and therefore accessible sequence of events."" Similarly, Macaulay's illustrations support only this narrower vision: detailed diagrams and close-ups explicate the text, sometimes even omitting a view of the entire project. It's fine as far as it goes; but the story of how innovative engineers have devised ways to deal with thrust and weight in ever-larger structures would be far more meaningful in the context of the structures' functions and, especially, their consequences. A glossary is appended. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
