Structural engineers are a bit like surgeons. Their sometimes extraordinarily complex decisions are often all that stands between life and death. Like surgeons, they tend to be an egotistical lot, full of a sense of themselves as the ones who hold this world together. And, of course, they have a point. The calculations and instincts of the structural engineer, like those of the surgeon, do often measure the distance between well-being and disaster. “Bridges, like health,” writes the engineer Henry Petroski, “are most appreciated when they begin to deteriorate and fail.” Unlike doctors, however, builders tend not to arouse the admiration of society as a whole. Engineers of all kinds tend to be lumped into the pocket-protector class, and are never the subjects of popular fiction, as surgeons often are. Can one imagine a TV show like “E. R.” centering on the lives and loves of engineers? Actually, I bet Henry Petroski can.

Every few years, along comes a particularly sensitive engineer who seeks to promote his profession to the cultural elite. In the 1980s we had Samuel Florman, one of whose tomes was entitled The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. In the 1990s, we have Henry Petroski, professor of civil engineering at Duke University, author of To Engineer Is Human, and more than a tad unlike most of the other Duke professors of our recent acquaintance. Petroski’s mission seems to be twofold. First, he wishes, as in his books The Pencil and The