To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

I purchased this book at the Duke University bookstore, after the recommendation from a professor at another institution.

Petroski's prose is extremely dense and verbose. His style consists of run-on sentences which require several readings. Even if it is technically (grammatically) correct, it is extremely difficult to read. The subject matter is dry to begin with, however, Petroski does nothing to liven it. I am an engineer also, and am not threatened by the technical information (admittedly lifted from his students' term papers). I have chemical engineering textbooks that read like a novel. Hopefully the courses he teaches are clearer than this muddled prose.

Petroski is certainly an engineer. He has engineered an elegant method of making money from saps like us. I successfully engineered Petroski's book into a beverage coaster to help drown the sorrows of wasting $14 on this book.

In this book, Petroski brings up a few good points. Engineering is human. Engineers, as oppose to what some think, are not perfect. They are not able to create a perfect design for the given problem. They create what they believe is the best solution for the given design specifications. They, along with others, test their solution, in theory. The majority of these solutions are created and succeed perfectly. Although most of these designs are successful, some are not.

It seems to be most of the failures of designs happen when it deals with something big, including the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways, which killed over 100 people, or the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. These failures become famous and the engineers are the first ones to be looked at.

Along with engineering success comes failure. This is a part of being human. Human engineering will always have its failures along with its successes. When engineers build something, they analyze it to determine if their solution is the best solution. Sometimes it takes a failure for the engineers to see their failures and to correct the problem. This book tries to explain this and does in most cases. In some of the cases, it leaves the reader wondering what else could have been done or what needs to be done in the future to prevent these failures.

The engineer's profession is notoriously fast-paced, and what is exciting today is ho-hum tomorrow. So it is with the failure cases outlined in this 1992 paperback. Not that these cases are dull - far from it! - but when the addendum at the end of this book was written the Challenger space shuttle had blown up and the disaster was just being figured out. Now we have seen the shuttle Columbia break up, as a result of NASA slowly forgetting the Challenger lessons.

With that problem so noted, I still strongly recommend this book as a great read if you want to find out what the business of failure analysis is. It is perfect for beginning engineers and for those who have an interest in the forensics of hardware like aircraft, bridges, and other structures.

A little wordy. Suggsted for serious work not for casual reader.

The point of the author could be made in 1/2 the pages. The detail and repeated points particularly regarding silverware is overkill and makes it difficult not to abandon the boring book.