Day 13: Book Whose Main Character Is Most Like You

Again, this list is throwing me a curve ball. I am not really the type of person people like to cast as their main characters. I have not fallen in love, I am no "rags-to-riches" story, not a super genius. So the book I choose isn't really a lighthearted book, but I want to read it someday:

"To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" by Henry Petroski

The moral of this book is that behind every great engineering success is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular) engineering failures. Petroski covers many of the best known examples of well-intentioned but ultimately failed design in action -- the galloping Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which you've probably seen tossing cars willy-nilly in the famous black-and-white footage), the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways -- and many lesser known but equally informative examples. The line of reasoning Petroski develops in this book were later formalized into his quasi-Darwinian model of technological evolution in The Evolution of Useful Things, but this book is arguably the more illuminating -- and definitely the more enjoyable -- of these two titles.

      I find failure fascinating, because if you know why something fails, you can figure out how to prevent it from happening in the future. Which, if I do say so myself, is pretty awesome.

=)