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Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering. By Henry Petroski. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Pp. xxii+288. $25.
It is likely that most readers of T&C have read at least one of Henry Petroski's books on engineering and design. A few of these books have dealt with important though mundane items like paper clips and pencils. Pushing the Limits, his twelfth book, deals with designs at the other end of the scale: massive, even grandiose, structures that have taken their creators into perilous engineering territory.
Nearly half the book is devoted to bridges, which are some of the most visible artifacts of adventurous engineering. Individual chapters cover, in varying levels of detail, structures as varied as Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge, London's Tower Bridge, and a small floating bridge in Vermont. Bridges are some of the most aesthetically satisfying technological accomplishments, in part because their designers often have concerned themselves with the artistic merit of their creations. Artistry, of course, has to be coupled with technical competence, and Petroski does a good job of describing the engineering challenges that had to be overcome in...