Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering

by Henry Petroski

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. Pushing the Limits  celebrates 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.

Genres: Engineering, Nonfiction, Science, Architecture, Stem

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

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

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting details about some major engineering projects but comes across as somewhat disjointed. The book would have been helped with many more illustrations. I did not enjoy this as much as I did his earlier books - he allowed his own personal biases to come through in many discussions.
Also, his seeming insistence that the Y2K computer problem was a fake makes me question a lot of his other assumptions. I was part of mitigating those problems and I know what could have happened with some systems.

[severyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should have been interesting, but ultimately too random a compilation of articles. Would have benefited from rework to create some coherence in book form.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book certainly was written right after 9/11

[Dena Burnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Petroski's most engaging work, but still worth the read if you're a fan of his.
It's actually an anthology of essays he's published in various magazines, so some of the information is quite dated (he started writing them in 1991) and has advanced or been modified since publishing, but that's the nature of science and technology writing.

I prefer his books about engineering theory, as opposed to this collection looking at engineering achievement. It provides a good analysis persuading the reader of the importance of engineers in society; but as an engineer myself I have a good grasp on this concept and didn't need much persuading.

I'd recommend it if you've read Petroski's other works, but I likely won't read it again myself.

[Kate K. F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a reader with little knowledge of engineering, this book was a wonderful introduction to the challenges of construction and what engineers accomplish. Each chapter tells a story of engineering challenges and failures, which makes it easy for a reader to get involved. The first half of the book covers bridges as they are some of the most recognizable civil engineering structures and then moves to skyscrapers, dams and ends with what lays ahead. This is a book that would work for anyone who is curious about how the great structures of the world came into being and what lies ahead.

[David Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn't realized how unique large bridges were, and how difficult designing and building one is. Read this if you've wondered about that.

The parts on bridges and damns was fascinating and interesting. The chapter about the big damn in China on the Yangtze River was OK. The chapter about 9/11/01 was OK.

He writes better than the average engineer!

[David R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of essays by the engineer Henry Petroski is ultimately unsatisfying. The overall structure is a mess: a fair number of bridges in Part I, and a miscellany in Part II (some buildings, dams, two engineer bios, and two flights of fancy); it didn't tie together especially well. The material pertinent to individual constructions also suffers from a deficit of illustrations.

[Elizabeth Sims · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was such a fan of Petroski's after THE PENCIL that when I saw this used I picked it up. I love the concision of his writing. This books is sort of a melange, like some of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff. Somehow not as fabulous as THE PENCIL (how's that for concision?...) but still I enjoyed it. Looking forward to checking out some of his others.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of his magazine columns. Interesting and browsable, but not particularly deep, and without a real overarching structure.