To engineer is human The role of failure in successful design

Here is a gem of a book. Engineering professor Petroski raises the concept that past failure in engineering design is the handmaiden of future success and innovation. He discusses some monumental failureslike the collapse of elevated walkways in a Kansas City hoteland shows how they led engineers to advance their art to meet new needs. One chapter declares, ``Falling Down Is Part of Growing Up.'' His examples are mostly the honest-mistake kind, and not the sloppy design and testing, for instance, that results in recalls of new autos. But in marvelously clear prose, he gives valuable insight into the limits of engineering and its practitioners. A fine book for general and history-of-technology collections alike. Daniel LaRossa, Connetquot P.L., Bohemia, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

An engagingly candid audit of the engineering state of the art, which reaches provocative conclusions on the price of progress. Innovation involves risk and invites calamities that, ironically, can enhance the integrity and hence safety of subsequent designs, observes the author, a professor of civil engineering at Duke University. He examines a number of fatal accidents attributable to design (i.e., human) error--e.g., the Hyatt Regency Hotel's collapsed skywalls, the de Havilland Comet that broke up in flight, and the Norwegian floatel for oil-rig crews that sank in a North Sea gale. Covered as well are notable engineering failures which cost no lives, including the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Grumman Flexible buses, whose revolutionary frames could not stand up to the rigors of New York City potholes, and the roof of the Hartford Civic Center, which caved in one snowy night. There are numerous lessons to be learned from mistakes of this magnitude, Petroski Finds. Among others, he cites Grumman's pioneering bus design as ""a forceful example of what can go wrong when too many demands--fuel efficiency, light weight, accessibility, comfort, maneuverability, and more--require radical change."" While the author concentrates on catastrophe, his text is not without landmark triumphs, notably a detailed account of the structural contributions made by Sir Joseph Paxton, who designed the Crystal Palace along lines suggested by lily leaves for London's Great Exposition of 1851. Indeed, he asserts, the intense attention accorded engineering's failures represents an indirect celebration of the profession's many unremarked successes. Petroski's back-to-the-drawing-board critiques of weak lines, design tradeoffs, and safety factors may prove less than reassuring for the security conscious. He nonetheless provides a lucid account of the uses of engineering adversity that deserves a readership beyond the building and/or mechanical trades. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.