Henry Petroski. Small Things Considered (2003)

      Henry Petroski. Small Things Considered (2003) Petroski, an engineer with a flair for both history and writing, has done a number of books on the art that we call engineering. His best known book perhaps is To Engineer is Human, a discussion of engineering failures, both of their specific reasons and the general problem faced by all engineers, that they can’t always predict precisely enough how structures will behave. Here, he applies the same point of view to design in general, with the constant theme that design entails compromise, and that therefore no design is perfect. Several of the chapters originally appeared as magazine pieces; others read suspiciously like lectures revised for reading. All in all, the book has a cobbled-together feel, a design flaw that Petroski would no doubt acknowledge.
      His last chapter ends with a reminder that engineers cannot make perfect devices, that failure is inevitable, and that therefore the non-engineering public that uses the products of engineering design must be neither too demanding nor too complacent. Good points, but it doesn’t take a whole book to make them. So, although any one chapter in this book is a pleasure to read, I can’t recommend reading the whole thing at one sitting, unless of course one wants to know all about the many small things whose design history Petroski traces, from pizza savers to chairs. In other words, a book to keep as a reference, perhaps. **½ (2004)