The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans

Chemical engineer Hammack (Eight Amazing Engineering Stories) makes a fascinating case that engineering isn’t the same as science in this sweeping history. He defines engineering as “solving problems using rules of thumb that cause the best change in a poorly understood situation using available resources,” and suggests that such problem-solving is “the force that has created the human world as we know it.” He begins with medieval cathedrals—immense, beautiful, and durable structures built by masons using “experience-derived, provisional guidelines, none of which guarantee a correct answer, yet when woven together create works of stunning utility, reliability, and beauty”—and hopscotches forward through breakthroughs in, for instance, ceramics that were made thanks to “key strategies of the engineering method” (including “building on past knowledge” and “accepting trade-offs”), and the advent of the microwave oven, which became ubiquitous despite being “a failed version of what the Raytheon engineers were trying to build.” Hammack brilliantly delineates the role of trial and error in human progress, and presents a knockout argument that a perfect understanding of the world is not a prerequisite to innovation. This clever and curious account delivers. (Mar.)