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Book Review

Root Cause Analysis Book -- To Engineer is Human

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To Engineer Is Human
The Role of Failure In Successful Design

by Henry Petroski
Jacket Review
"Serious, amusing, probing, sometimes frightening and always literate."  -- Los Angeles Times

"Reading Petroski's fine book is not only a delight, it is a necessity."  -- Houston Chronicle

How did a simple design error cause one of the great disasters of the 1980s -- the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel?  What made the graceful and innovative Tacoma Narrows Bridge twist apart in a mild wind in 1940?  How did an oversized water lily inspire the magnificent Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering?  These are some of the failures and successes that Henry Petroski, author of the acclaimed The Pencil, examines in this engaging, wonderfully literate book.  More than a series of fascinating case studies, To Engineer is Human is a work that looks at our deepest notions of progress and perfection, tracing the fine connection between the quantifiable realm of science and the chaotic realities of everyday life.

"Alert, inquisitive, unspecialized, wholly human... refreshingly eclectic."  -- The Spectator

"Henry Petroski is an ardent engineer, and if he writes more good books like this, he might find himself nominated to become the meistersinger of the guild.  This is a refreshing plunge into the dynamics of the engineering ethos... as straightforward as an I-beam."  -- SCIENCE 
Table of Contents
1.  Being Human

2.  Falling Down is Part of Growing Up

3.  Lessons from Play; Lessons from Life.  Appendix:  "The Deacon's Masterpiece," by Oliver Wendell Holmes

4.  Engineering as Hypothesis

5.  Success is Foreseeing Failure

6.  Design is Getting from Here to There

7.  Design as Revision

8.  Accidents Waiting to Happen

9.  Safety in Numbers

10.  When Cracks Become Breakthroughs

11.  Of Bus Frames and Knife Blades

12.  Interlude:  The Success Story of the Crystal Palace

13.  The Ups and Downs of Bridges

14.  Forensic Engineering and Engineering Friction

15.  From Slide Rule to Computer:  Forgetting How it Used to Be Done

16.  Connoisseurs of Chaos

17.  The Limits of Design