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  • Published: 15 December 2005
  • ISBN: 9781400032945
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99

Pushing the Limits

New Adventures in Engineering



The premier authority on engineering takes us behind the scenes of twelve of the world's greatest feats and failures, from London's incomparable Tower Bridge to the collapse of the World Trade Towers. First time in paperback.

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.

  • Published: 15 December 2005
  • ISBN: 9781400032945
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Henry Petroski

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of nine previous books.

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Praise for Pushing the Limits

"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." --New York Sun

"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." --New Scientist