{"product_id":"pushing-the-limits-isbn-9781400032945","title":"Pushing the Limits","description":"Here are two dozen tales in the grand adventure of engineering from the Henry Petroski, who has been called America’s poet laureate of technology. \u003cb\u003ePushing the Limits \u003c\/b\u003ecelebrates some of the largest things we have created–bridges, dams, buildings--and provides a startling new vision of engineering’s past, its present, and its future. Along the way it highlights our greatest successes, like London’s Tower Bridge; our most ambitious projects, like China’s Three Gorges Dam; our most embarrassing moments, like the wobbly Millennium Bridge in London; and our greatest failures, like the collapse of the twin towers on September 11. Throughout, Petroski provides fascinating and provocative insights into the world of technology with his trademark erudition and enthusiasm for the subject.\u003ci\u003ePreface \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBRIDGES\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArt in Iron and Steel\u003cbr\u003eBridges of America \u003cbr\u003eBenjamin Franklin Bridge\u003cbr\u003eFloating Bridges\u003cbr\u003eConfederation Bridge\u003cbr\u003ePont de Normandie \u003cbr\u003eBritannia Bridge \u003cbr\u003eTower Bridge \u003cbr\u003eDrawing Bridges\u003cbr\u003eAn Eye-Opening Bridge\u003cbr\u003eMillennium Legacies \u003cbr\u003eBroken Bridges \u003cbr\u003eNew and Future Bridges \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAND OTHER THINGS\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDorton Arena \u003cbr\u003eBilbao \u003cbr\u003eSantiago Calatrava \u003cbr\u003eFazlur Khan \u003cbr\u003eThe Fall of Skyscrapers \u003cbr\u003eVanities of the Bonfire \u003cbr\u003eSt. Francis Dam \u003cbr\u003eThree Gorges Dam \u003cbr\u003eFuel Cells \u003cbr\u003eEngineers’ Dreams \u003cbr\u003eEngineers’ Achievements \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments and Bibliography \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eList of Illustrations and Credits \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndex\u003c\/i\u003e\"A fascinating potpourri of history, engineering, and imagination, all presented in the fluid, humane writing style that we have come to expect from this author.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A pleasure. . . .  It is a measure of Mr. Petroski's skill and sensibility that his essays about structures made of steel and stone so frequently provide a sense of that large humanity, as well.\" --\u003ci\u003eNew York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He writes clearly about complicated subjects, and provides lucid explanations and penetrating insights.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Henry Petroski turns an expert eye on the technology--and economics and vanity--behind [building]. The most compelling chapters concern disasters, from the collapse to the World Trade Center to the whip-snapping death of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. These essays are elegantly written and consistently thought-provoking.\" --\u003ci\u003eNew Scientist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Henry Petroski has become the main emissary from the world of engineering to the rest of us. . . . He brings clarity and good sense to his subject, making the enigmatic world of things a little less mystifying.\" --\u003ci\u003eAustin American-Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Petroski writes . . . with the observant eye of an engineer and the imaginative heart of a novelist.\" --\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An unlikely combination of mathematical brain power and a more irrational curiosity. . . . Petroski not only can put science in laymen's terms, but also can do so without killing its magic.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Petroski . . . asks us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.\" --\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[There is] pleasure [in] seeing Henry Petroski's playful mind at work.\" --\u003ci\u003eScientific American\u003c\/i\u003eHenry 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.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArt in Iron and Steel\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eWorks of engineering and technology are sometimes viewed as the antitheses of art and humanity. Think of the connotations of assembly lines, robots, and computers. Any positive values there might be in such creations of the mind and human industry can be overwhelmed by the associated negative images of repetitive, stressful, and threatened jobs. Such images fuel the arguments of critics of technology even as they may drive powerful cars and use the Internet to protest what they see as the artless and dehumanizing aspects of living in an industrialized and digitized society. At the same time, landmark megastructures such as the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges are almost universally hailed as majestic human achievements as well as great engineering monuments that have come to embody the spirits of their respective cities. The relationship between art and engineering has seldom been easy or consistent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArguably, the assembly-line process associated with Henry Ford made workers tools of the system, but Ford also wanted to produce automobiles that were affordable to working people, and he paid his own workers sufficiently well that they could save to buy the cars they made. The human worker may have appeared to be but a cog in the wheel of industry, yet photographers could reveal the beauty of line and composition in a worker doing something as common as using a wrench to turn a bolt. When Ford's enormous River Rouge plant opened in 1927 to produce the Model A, the painter\/photographer Charles Sheeler was chosen to photograph it. The world's largest car factory captured the imagination of Sheeler, who described it as the most thrilling subject he ever had to work with. The artist also composed oil paintings of the plant, giving them titles such as American Landscape and Classic Landscape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLong before Sheeler, other artists, too, had seen the beauty and humanity in works of engineering and technology. This is perhaps no more evident than in Coalbrookdale, England, where iron, which was so important to the industrial revolution, was worked for centuries.  Here, in the late eighteenth century, Abraham Darby III cast on the banks of the Severn River the large ribs that formed the world’s first iron bridge, a dramatic departure from the classic stone and timber bridges that dotted the countryside and were captured in numerous serene landscape paintings. The metal structure, simply but appropriately called Iron Bridge, still spans the river and still beckons engineers, artists, and tourists to gaze upon and walk across it, as if on a pilgrimage to a revered place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt Coalbrookdale, the reflection of the ironwork in the water completes the semicircular structure to form a wide-open eye into the future that is now the past. One artist's bucolic depiction shows pedestrians and horsemen on the bridge, as if on a woodland trail. On one shore, a pair of well-dressed onlookers interrupt their stroll along the riverbank, perhaps to admire the bridge. On the other side of the gently flowing river, a lone man leads two mules beneath an arch that lets the towpath pass through the bridge's abutment. A single boatman paddles across the river in a tiny tub boat. He is in no rush because there is no towline to carry from one side of the bridge to the other. This is how Michael Rooker saw Iron Bridge in  his 1792 painting. A colored engraving of the scene hangs in the  nearby Coalbrookdale museum, along with countless other contemporary  renderings of the bridge in its full glory and in its context,  showing the iron structure not as a blight on the landscape but at  the center of it. The surrounding area at the same time radiates out  from the bridge and pales behind it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the nineteenth century, the railroads captured the imagination of  artists, and the steam engine in the distance of a landscape became  as much a part of it as the herd of cows in the foreground. The  Impressionist Claude Monet painted man-made structures like railway  stations (La Gare Saint-Lazare) and cathedrals (Rouen) as well as  water lilies. Portrait painters such as Christian Schussele found  subjects in engineers and inventors-and their inventions-as well as  in the American founding fathers. By the twentieth century,  engineering, technology, and industry were very well established as  subjects for artists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmerican-born Joseph Pennell illustrated many European travel  articles and books, including-among the many with his wife, Elizabeth  Robins Pennell-Over the Alps on a Bicycle. Pennell, who early in his  career made drawings of buildings under construction and shrouded in  scaffolding, returned to America late in life and recorded industrial  activities during World War I. He is perhaps best known among  engineers for his depiction of the Panama Canal as it neared  completion and his etchings of the partially completed Hell Gate and  Delaware River bridges.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePennell has often been quoted as saying, \"Great engineering is great  art,\" a sentiment that he expressed repeatedly. He wrote of his  contemporaries, \"I understand nothing of engineering, but I know that  engineers are the greatest architects and the most pictorial builders  since the Greeks.\" Where some observers saw only utility, Pennell saw  also beauty, if not in form then at least in scale. He felt he was  not only rendering a concrete subject but also conveying through his  drawings the impression that it made on him. Pennell called the  sensation that he felt before a great construction project \"The  Wonder of Work.\" He saw engineering as a process. That process is  memorialized in every completed dam, skyscraper, bridge, or other  great achievement of engineering.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf Pennell experienced the wonder of work in the aggregate, Lewis  Hine focused on the individuals who engaged in the work. Hine was  trained as a sociologist but became best known as a photographer who  exposed the exploitation of children. His early work documented  immigrants passing through Ellis Island, along with the conditions in  the New York tenements where they lived and the sweatshops where they  worked. His depictions of child labor in the Carolinas brought to  public attention how young children toiled for long hours amid  dangerous machinery. Hine depicted American Red Cross relief efforts  during World War I and, afterward, the burdens war placed on  children. Upon returning to New York, he was given the opportunity to  record the construction of the Empire State Building, which resulted  in the striking photographs that have become such familiar images of  daring and insouciance. He put his own life at risk to capture  workers suspended on cables hundreds of feet in the air and sitting  on a high girder eating lunch. To engineers today, one of the most  striking features of these photos, published in 1932 in Men at Work,  is the absence of safety lines and hard hats. However, perhaps more  than anything, the photos evoke Pennell's \"wonder of work\" and  inspire admiration for the bravery and skill that bring a great  engineering project to completion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlfred Stieglitz, who intended to study engineering at Berlin  Polytechnic, redirected his interests to photochemistry after he  acquired a small camera, and while still a student he began to work  to gain recognition for photography as an art form on a par with  painting. His early work showed steady technical innovation, as he  took photographs in snow, in rain, and at night. He is considered the  father of modern photography as an art form. In addition to making a  series of four hundred prints of his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, and also  four hundred prints of cloud patterns related to emotions, Stieglitz  captured with his camera memorable images of New York's Flatiron  Building and other structures. (O'Keeffe herself, so well-known for  her abstract floral forms and southwestern themes, painted views of  the East River, dominated by rooftops and industrial smokestacks, and  the Brooklyn Bridge that crossed that river.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the 1930s, Margaret Bourke-White, who established a reputation for  photographing industrial sites, produced photo essays of Russia and  the Soviet Union, and would go on to become the first official woman  photojournalist to cover World War II. Some of her most widely known  work was produced for Life. Her first assignment for the new  publication was to photograph dams under construction in the  northwest United States by the Public Works Administration, and she  focused her efforts of the enormous (four-mile-long) Fort Peck Dam in  northeastern Montana. Her famous portrait of the earthen dam's  concrete spillway structure appeared on the cover of the inaugural  issue of the magazine, dated November 23, 1936.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEdward Steichen, another pioneer in photography as an art form, was  attracted to both the glamour of Hollywood (Greta Garbo and Charlie  Chaplin were two of his subjects) and the squalor of the battlefield.  He led the photography division of the Army Air Service in World War  I, and headed the Navy photography unit in World War II. As director  of the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art, he  organized The Family of Man exhibition in 1955, a landmark fusion of  art and humanity. Steichen also photographed the Flatiron Building.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoseph Stella, known for painting abstract floral themes (aquatic  life and jungle foliage), returned throughout his life to the subject  of the Brooklyn Bridge and often abstracted New York City in his  paintings. The East River and Brooklyn Bridge also captured the  imaginations of poets. In his \"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,\" Walt Whitman  wrote about the river scene that so many commuters saw each day. He  was one of them, and he reveled alike in the sunset and the ships in  the harbor and the contrast of the foundry chimneys against the  sunset. When the Brooklyn Bridge replaced the ferry, it also  succeeded it as an inspiration to poets such as Hart Crane, whose  book-length poem The Bridge is perhaps the best known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough many painters, photographers, and poets have seen art and  humanity in the products of engineering and technology, not all  artists have. Many in the late-nineteenth-century Parisian artistic  and literary community found the Eiffel Tower \"an offense to good  taste\" and characterized it as coming from the \"baroque, mercantile  imaginings of a machine builder.\" The builder, Gustave Eiffel,  defended his wrought-iron tower as \"beautiful in its own right.\" He  also defended the works of engineers generally: \"Can one think that  because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do  not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting  structures?\" He further held that \"there is an attraction, a special  charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIndeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist  painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and  inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as  blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas. And the greatest of  bridge engineers, especially, have quite explicitly written and  spoken of the aesthetic criteria and human values that influenced the  shapes, forms, textures, and functions of their structures; the spans  themselves stand as tributes to their successful applications of  their ideals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIron Bridge was only the first in a long line of cast-iron,  wrought-iron, and steel structures that have continued to grace the  British landscape. Although its form was borrowed from the ancient  lines of stone and the details from the classic lines of timber  construction, it did not owe its structural success to their  principles. In particular, the strength of iron enabled subsequent  bridges to be built with much lower profiles, thus at the same time  marking them as daring and making them more user-friendly. Thomas  Telford was one of the first masters of the shallow metal arch, with  his 1814 Craigellachie Bridge over the River Spey near Elgin,  Scotland, being an outstanding example. The crossed struts between  the thin arch and equally thin deck give the bridge a transparency  and accessibility unknown in stone structures. The crenellated towers  of the abutment, Telford's acknowledgment of the setting into which  the bridge might otherwise have appeared to be an intruder, tie it  into the culture of its place. Telford used a similar architectural  motif on his Conwy Suspension Bridge, in deference to the Welsh  castle to which it leads. Of course, Telford looked well beyond  castles for his inspiration. His 1826 Menai Bridge married massive  stone towers, which appear to have evolved naturally from the piers  under the approach spans, with wrought-iron chains to produce a  profile of near-perfect proportions that served as an aesthetic model  for suspension bridges well into the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, is almost three times as  large as the Menai, and during construction its towers dominated the  New York City skyline. The technical challenge that John A. Roebling  faced in spanning the East River was to design a structure that would  not interfere with shipping. This demanded not only a high roadway  beneath which tall-masted ships could pass but also a great span to  provide a wide, unobstructed channel. Suspension bridges were  Roebling's forte, but the combination of constraints in New York  called for one of unprecedented length and height. Rather than design  a purely utilitarian structure, he produced a masterpiece. The tall  stone towers pierced by the twin Gothic arches through which traffic  passes are necessarily massive, but their monumental design makes  them feel architecturally right. Roebling's patented steel-wire  cables hang with a well-proportioned sag, counterpointed by the taut  diagonal stay cables that the engineer included out of respect for  the wind and what it could do to an unstayed bridge deck. The bridge  deck was designed not only for horses and carriages but also for  people, and the elevated walkway that puts the walkers above the road  traffic makes the bridge at the same time a brilliant work of  engineering, art, and humanity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA walk across the Brooklyn Bridge is one of the world's great  pedestrian experiences. The arched towers are triumphal, not in a  military but in a civil-engineering sense. The cables and diagonal  stays pull the eye upward to the top of the tower and to the  prominent date stone embedded near the top. The high-altitude  reminder that the Brooklyn tower dates from 1875 (the Manhattan one  is from 1876) makes the walker feel not small and insignificant but  part of a larger humanity that could erect this grand edifice with  little more than muscle and steam power. To stroll the walkway of the  Brooklyn Bridge is to experience the dynamic nature of the bridge  itself, with the suspension cables first dipping down to meet the  walker at midspan and then rising up again with the spirit to the  tower top. The skyscrapers of lower Manhattan appear through the  screen of steel as a great backdrop for the bridge itself. It is so  grand in its execution that it is easy to forget that the bridge was  built for the city, not the city for the bridge. Until recently, the  twin towers of the World Trade Center dominated the view and appeared  to be inspired by the bridge itself, echoing its twin arches in more  modern lines. The bridge's empty arches now serve as reminders of what was once a different skyline, but seeing the sun setting through its network of stone and steel is still as dramatic an event as watching it set over any mountain or sea.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303582585061,"sku":"NP9781400032945","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400032945.jpg?v=1767735234","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/pushing-the-limits-isbn-9781400032945","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}