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When I was a high school sophomore taking Algebra and Trig, I asked the teacher what these subjects were used for. Her response, in a husky, whiskey-and-cigarettes Southern voice was "Honey, I've been teaching this for 25 years, and I still don't know."
That was 1965. I suspect that she might have had a different answer for a boy.
I first read Skyscraper after seeing the tv series, which must have been in the early 1990s (this was published in 1990). I was fascinated because of the story that Sabbagh tells and because I finally got the answer to what the trigonometry was good for. Had I read the book in junior high (way back in the'60s, well before it was published), I might be an architect or civil engineer today.
My absolute favorite eye-popping-eye-opener in Skyscraper is the explanation of how giant pieces of steel get to the job site on time every day. Imagine a multi-acre outdoor storage space in New Jersey with of stacks of steel lined up like giant Tinker Toys waiting for the right day and the right sized truck with the driver equipped with the exact route into the city that will account for the size of the truck, the one-way streets, the random construction zones, and all of the other obstacles to just-in-time delivery.
Skyscraper also answers a question that I know has been bothering you: how do they get the cranes to the top of the building?
Go ahead. Read this book. Give it to your friends who are engineers or architects and to your curious children.
- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (July 1, 1991)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0140152849
- ISBN-13: 978-0140152845
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
- Average Customer Review: 11 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#289,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #418 in Architectural History
- #457 in Architecture Reference (Books)
- #617 in Architectural Buildings
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