Showing titles in Engineering

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 waterlily 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.

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is the expression of what “You and Your Research” outlined. It's a book about thinking; more specifically, a style of thinking by which great ideas are conceived. The book is filled with stories of people performing mighty deeds—but they are not meant simply to be admired. Instead, they are to be aspired to, learned from, and surpassed. Hamming consistently returns to Shannon’s information theory, Einstein’s theory of relativity, Grace Hopper’s work on high-level programming, Kaiser’s work on digital filters, and his own work on error-correcting codes.

For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well—or the engineer. The staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high level as role models, driving big projects, determining technical strategy, and raising everyone's skills. This in-depth book shows you how to understand your role, manage your time, master strategic thinking, and set the standard for technical work.

A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN TIME, VOX, AND VULTURE 'Batty and brilliant' THE TIMES 'Truly original . . . deeply weird, deeply funny and deeply felt' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Very strange and very funny' GUARDIAN 'Audaciously imagined. Slyly executed. Surprisingly tender. Deliciously weird' RACHEL YODER...

Marc Márquez is the apex predator of the MotoGP world: arguably the greatest motorcycle racer who ever lived, he is an eight-time world champion. He is the man who dethroned Valentino Rossi, and who changed the sport of MotoGP forever. Told by bestselling author Stuart Barker, with the insight of rivals, team members, pundits, managers and many close to his story, experience in this book that rare thing: pure sporting theatre and white-knuckle speed twinned with real human drama. Everything or Nothing is the Márquez story told like never before.

Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

The Four Points of the Compass takes the listener on a journey of directional discovery. Jerry Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why the early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever oriented themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. 

Joshua Slocum was believed to be the first man to sail single-handed around the world. After a distinguished career, where he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Joshua Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdad, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success.

Build your first beehive from scratch and create a flourishing hive with this beekeeping bible. This audiobook has everything a novice needs to get started, as well as anecdotes and tips to inspire and instruct an experienced beekeeper.

On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken treasure, but any salvage had to be secret, since the British government dared not alert the Germans to the presence of the gold. Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant was the most qualified officer to head the risky mission.

Why do people love trains so much? Tom Chesshyre is on a mission to find the answer by experiencing the world through train travel - on both epic and everyday rail routes, aboard every type of ride, from steam locomotives to bullet trains, meeting a cast of memorable characters who share a passion for train travel. Join him on the rails and off the beaten track as he embarks on an exhilarating whistle-stop tour around the globe, on journeys on celebrated trains and railways.

This is the full story of the unstoppable rise of Clarkson, Hammond, May and The Stig – and how they have transformed an ordinary programme about cars into one of the most famous and best-loved TV programmes of the 21st century. Reaching a peak in the 1990s thanks to presenter Jeremy Clarkson, the original series then faced the axe in 2001 – but Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman successfully pitched a new format to BBC bosses and Top Gear returned to become the irreverent, funny and often controversial show we now know and love.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik, read by Daniel Weyman. A unique and inspiring exploration of human creativity from one of the UK's best-known scientists Everything is made of something... From the everyday objects in our homes to the most extraordinary...

Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.

Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic." —Pico Iyer A brilliant, fierce writer makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating...

In The Origins of Efficiency, Brian Potter argues that improving production efficiency—finding ways to produce goods and services in less time, with less labor, using fewer resources—is the force behind some of the biggest and most consequential changes in human history.

What is it about the top tech product companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, and Tesla that enables their record of consistent innovation? Most people think it's because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products. 

What is the greatest scientific idea of all?Because science has so dramatically altered how we live and how we think about ourselves, the answer may well be the very idea of science itself, because-just like science's most important achievements-it, too, needed to be thought about, perfected, and invented.

On 25 May 1982, at a critical juncture in the Falklands War, the destroyer HMS Coventry was attacked by Argentinean aircraft. In a devastating strike, she was hit by three bombs, two of which exploded inside her hull, killing 19 of her crew and leaving many others badly injured. Within minutes Coventry had capsized, and would finally sink the following day. It was the first occasion since the Second World War that a British captain and crew had to abandon a stricken ship.

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.