Engineers Of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America

by Henry Petroski

With 131 illustrations in text.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Engineering, Science, Ebooks, Architecture, Biography

479 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 1995

About the author

Henry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author.

Reviews

[John E · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of the building of large bridges in the United States and those involved with their building. Since it concentrates only on the largest, very little is said of the more modest brides and nothing of floating brides. The book is just technical enough that I could understand the terminology. The book is organized around the engineers and their personalities and their struggles to design, finance, and build these wonderful structures. I had a great time remembering how I crossed many of these bridges and had just taken them for granted. The failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 plays a large role in the last part of the book and in the culture and mythology here in the Puget Sound area.

[Mike Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book about ambition, politics, finance, failure, psychology and, of course, engineering. The introduction captured the reasons for my own love of bridges better than anything I myself could have written. Each chapter covers a notable bridge-builder while also including plenty of details about other engineers and discussing bridges that are not in North America. The conclusion feels prophetic in light of the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, engaging book (minus the intro, which is repetitive to the point of absurdity. Skip it for your own sanity). Petroski uses every introduction of a new person as an excuse to go on an extended tangent into their background and bridge-related history, which may be annoying if you're expecting a more straightforward narrative. I, however, was happy to be swept along.

[Rayfes Mondal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this author but wasn't as interested in the detailed stories of the bridge builders profiled here. Just read the first and last chapters that were more about engineering and passing of knowledge from generation to generation.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

eads, cooper, lindenthal, amman, steinman

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but tough to stick with and finish.

[Mattia Andreoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the beginning, the jargon is introduced, so a little bit slow-paced, but then very interesting and illuminating history of these often overlooked technological achievements.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. The introduction felt very rambly, and almost unreadable. I've noticed that in a lot of Petroski's books. However, the body of the book was both informative and pleasant to read. I learned things. The book has three strands to it: the history of bridge engineering, the technical aspects of bridge engineering and construction, and also the evolution of engineering culture.

Something I didn't really appreciate is that during the golden age of big bridge building, roughly 1890 - 1960, there were a comparatively small number of top designers who collectively were involved in a large fraction of the country's big recognizable bridges. Pretty much everybody building a big suspension bridge wanted Modjeski or Amman or one of the handful of other top people to look over the plans and advise.

There may be a few factual inaccuracies, however. In one spot, the author mentions the Bay Bridge as "carrying Bay Area Rapid Transit trains on its lower deck" in 1989. This isn't true, and has never been true. The bridge used to carry Key System trolleys (lighter than BART trains), but that ended long before 1989.

[Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting but not compelling. Although I generally enjoyed what I read, I had to force myself to keep turning the pages. I would have appreciated a little more technical information on how the bridges "work." At least qualitatively, I wish the book would diagram some of the "broad strokes" of how the components of the bridge work to resist loads of wind and gravity. If you want to understand why the design of bridges evolved, this book doesn't really have enough technical detail to answer that question.

[Jason Hatcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am in the field of large bridge design and construction and was given this book by a close friend in the same line of work. It is a thoroughly interesting look at 5 of the most influential American bridge engineers, Eads, Cooper, Lindenthal, Ammann & Steinman.
An inspiring book.

[Dick Stapleton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, it took me five monthes to plow through this. Not sure why I stayed with it but I am a stubborn reader. Kept hoping it would, ahem, build, but book rarely delivered more than list of engineer's names. The engineers dreamed and their bridges soared. Alas, the telling did not.

[Jesse Hackell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Driving across the George Washington Bridge, one would never guess the politics and stories behind it's construction. It is like seeing these bridges from a previously inaccessible vantage point.

[Clint · Rating 3 out of 5]

All about bridges! Fascinating how we evolved towards the huge monster bridges that we often take for granted. Pretty detailed but very interesting.

[Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

eBook. Lots of good info, but also too much detail and repetition. Ch 5, on GWB, Golden Gate, etc. is most interesting

[Peter Milligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A treasure.