Customer Reviews

The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems

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In this highly engrossing book, Petroski eloquently challenges a fundamental and profound bias in our society--the relegation of engineers and engineering to second-class status among professions. He traces to roots of the perceived primacy of science over engineering to the Western Platonic bias that "ideas are superior and prerequisite to things" and to the simplistic linear model of research-before-development promulgated by science administrator Vannevar Bush in the 1940s. Petroski uses examples such as the steam engine, powered flight and rocketry, to demonstrate that engineering often leads science, and also that science is a tool of engineering. He also compellingly describes the optimistic, challenging, rewarding nature of engineering, showing its satisfying creativity. And to demonstrate the richness of engineering, he takes the reader through a tour of technologies as seen through the eyes of an engineer, including speed bumps and humps, dams, climate change, "geoengineering" of the earth to combat climate change, renewable energy, nanotechnology, robotics, structural earthquake engineering, hurricane protection, airline accidents, the electric power grid, evolution of the automobile, and "financial engineering." This book is essential reading, not only for engineers and students, but for all of us who benefit from the vast wealth of technology that makes modern life possible.

"The Essential Engineer" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Petroski's book interview ran here as the cover feature on March 26, 2010.

Uninteresting. Unfocused. Unresearched. Does not even attempt to do what the subtitle suggests.

It reads like dictated random thoughts by someone who felt he had to publish but did not really know what he wanted to discuss. Very disappointing. The topic could have been fascinating and informative.