Henry Petroski, Author . Knopf $25 (384p) ISBN 978-0-375-41353-7
In this subtle, engaging memoir, Petroski reminisces about his idyllic 1950s Catholic boyhood in Cambria Heights, Queens, as a member of a guild of paperboys. The headlines of the Long Island Press, which the author used to deliver on his cherished...
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Henry Petroski, Author . Knopf $25 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4050-6
"Design can be easy and difficult at the same time, but in the end, it is mostly difficult." So writes engineering professor Petroski (The Evolution of Useful Things, etc.) in his latest effort, a wide-ranging exploration of the history and...
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Henry Petroski, Author . Knopf $25 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4051-3
Petroski (The Evolution of Useful Things
) again meets his usual high standard when it comes to writing about technology, but this collection of articles from American Scientist,
some dating back to the early 1990s, never quite coheres as a unified
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Henry Petroski, Author . Princeton Univ. $22.95 (235p) ISBN 978-0-691-12225-0
From the clumsy packaging of Aleve pain reliever to the space shuttle Columbia
disaster, this engrossing study mourns and celebrates failed designs that spur further improvement. Civil engineer Petroski, author of The Evolution of Useful Things ...
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Henry Petroski, Author . Knopf $27.95 (443p) ISBN 978-0-307-26636-1
The toothpick is not just “among the simplest of manufactured things,” Petroski explains, but one of the oldest: Grooves on fossilized teeth suggest that early hominids might have regularly applied small sticks or even blades of grass to
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Henry Petroski, Author . Knopf $26.95 (274p) ISBN 978-0-307-27245-4
For a quarter-century now, Duke University's Petroski has replaced Samuel Florman as the foremost American civil engineer explaining to lay audiences the nature of engineering and its crucial role in improving the world. Petroski has long been...
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Henry Petroski, Author Knopf Publishing Group $20 (448p) ISBN 978-0-679-73415-4
This delightful history of the lowly pencil offers a mind-sharpening look at the intersection of engineering, economics and culture. Illustrated. (Dec.)
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Henry Petroski, Author Vintage Books USA $16.95 (496p) ISBN 978-0-679-76021-4
Focusing on five engineers and their creations, Petroski looks at the great bridge-building era that spanned from the 1870s to the 1930s. (Nov.)
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Henry Petroski, Author Alfred A. Knopf $30 (479p) ISBN 978-0-679-43939-4
An exhilarating saga of ingenuity and sheer determination, this chronicle of the great era of American bridge building intersects with the time of technological innovation, the transformation of the U.S. into an industrial power and the birth of...
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Henry Petroski, Author Alfred A. Knopf $24 (256p) ISBN 978-0-375-40041-4
In this roundup of columns from American Scientist, bestselling author Petroski, a professor of civil engineering at Duke Univ., exhibits the graceful style and flair for storytelling that he brought to The Pencil and Engineers of Dreams. In this...
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Henry Petroski, Author Knopf Publishing Group $25 (434p) ISBN 978-0-394-57422-6
In this age of the computer, Petroski's delightful, elegant history of the lowly pencil is a mind-sharpener, a revelation. The pencil's slow evolution from metallic-lead stylus paralleled the growth of engineering prior to the Industrial Revolution.
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Henry Petroski, Author Harvard University Press $27.5 (256p) ISBN 978-0-674-46367-7
Invention, Petroski has steadfastly maintained, comes from a failure of design. The paperclip that can only be used in one direction, that becomes easily tangled in a box, or that tears the paper has led inventors to a cycle of improvements and...
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Henry Petroski, Author Alfred A. Knopf $26 (304p) ISBN 978-0-375-40649-2
That bookshelves might harbor secret and enchanting lives is a thrilling prospect for any serious reader. What laws of human nature govern our sturdy cases of books? What damning quirks of character glare from a few casually stowed volumes? In this...
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Henry Petroski. Harvard/Belknap, $27.95 (408p) ISBN 978-0-674-06584-0
"From ancient to modern times, the size of ships, the weight of obelisks, the height of cathedrals, the span of bridges…and the limits of everything have been defined, at least temporarily, by failure," Petroski writes in the first chapter of this...
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Henry Petroski. Bloomsbury, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-1-63286-360-7
Public infrastructure is often deemed interesting only to policy wonks, but Petroski (The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance), a professor of history and civil engineering at Duke University, proves that he can make it accessible and...
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Henry Petroski, with photographs by Catherine Petroski. Norton, $27.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-393-24204-1
In 1997, Duke University engineering and history professor Petroski (The Pencil) and his wife bought a summer house in coastal Maine. Although it was the riverside location that initially enchanted them, Petroski soon became intrigued by the house...
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