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In the ever increasing push for longer bridges,
taller buildings, bigger stadiums, and grander projects
of all kinds, engineers face new challenges that redefine
our sense of both aesthetics and functionality. Pushing
the Limits describes two dozen adventures in engineering
that provide a fresh look at the past, a unique view of
the present, and a telling glimpse into the future of the
discipline and how it affects our lives.
Henry Petroski tells the stories of significant
and daring enterprises -- some familiar, some virtually
unknown, and some that are still only dreams -- in their
historical and technological contexts. Among the achievements
are Philadelphia's landmark Benjamin Franklin Bridge, London's
incomparable Tower Bridge, and China's ambitious Three Gorges
Dam project. But pushing the limits of technology does not
come without risk. Petroski also chronicles great technological
disasters, such as the 1928 failure of California's St.
Francis Dam, the 1999 tragedy of the Texas A&M Bonfire,
and the September 11, 2001, collapse of New York's World
Trade Center towers. He deals with other calamities as well,
such as the 1994 earthquake that struck Southern California
and the embarrassingly wobbly Millennium Bridge in London,
which had to be shut down only three days after it opened.
The breadth and depth of Petroski's erudition
and his passionate interest in the art of design and in
building have earned him the title of America's poet laureate
of technology, and his exploration of the complexity of
what goes into design continues to stretch the imagination.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic
Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history
at Duke University. The author of eleven previous books,
he lives in Durham, North Carolina.
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