Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

For armchair inventors or those who are curious about the way things work, this book offers hours of delight. Petroski (engineering, Duke Univ.) provides an intricate look, in lay reader's terms, at the technology and basic rationale behind a number of items we often take for granted. The list is comprehensive: kitchen utensils, zippers, tools, paper clips, fast-food packaging, and more. The text is far from a recital of mere facts. Petroski's anecdotes and stories about individual designers and inventors are told with warm regard. Petroski also provides illuminating thoughts on the theoretical, historical, and cultural frameworks that influenced these creations. Although this book will appeal to a somewhat specialized audience, many general readers will find it fascinating and educational. For circulating libraries.-- Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

How have knives, forks, spoons, fasteners, aluminum cans, and telephones come to be as they are? Petroski, author of The Pencil (1990), searches the history of these and other tools and gadgets and finds that they have all evolved through variation and selection. "Form follows failure" is his maxim. Since no invention functions perfectly, every newly designed thing is a stimulus to further development. Failures stimulate variations that also fail, leading to new solutions. Patent applications support the maxim since they generally begin by emphasizing the failures of earlier solutions. Some of the author's histories are case studies (paper clips, windshield wipers, Post-It notes); some begin with summaries of earlier studies (Diderot, Agricola), while others are imaginative reconstructions of undocumented early developments. Petroski interprets the dictum "form follows function" to mean that use determines a unique design. However, using this interpretation, his histories showing many forms filling the same function become counter-examples. The evolutionary metaphor fits poorly; the variation and selection of artifacts are too culturally complex to match biological counterparts. It is the details of how particular useful things developed that make this book so fascinating. General; undergraduate. A. B. Stewart; Wright State University

Booklist Review

Petroski's The Pencil [BKL Ja 1 90] delighted readers with its insights into the ingenious design of a little-noticed, everyday object. His newest book expands upon this fascination with the "extraordinariness of the ordinary" in a series of linked investigations of the origin and evolution of various artifacts. Petroski scoffs at the phrase "Form follows function" and demonstrates how slowly and fumblingly objects are adapted to their uses. His account of the clumsy evolution of the fork, a relatively recent creation, is a prime example. Stating that inventors are actually critics trying to improve existing technologies and are, therefore, often stuck with entrenched failures of conception, Petroski illuminates the surprisingly entertaining histories of the pin industry, the paper clip, buttons, zippers, sandpaper, Scotch tape, cellophane, and Post-it notes. In a chapter on the development of tools to make tools, he delves into the manufacturing process and the sort of specialization that has resulted in 500 different kinds of hammers. A penetrating, anecdotal as well as philosophical look at how technology interacts with culture and why luxury is the true mother of invention. Watch for a simultaneous paperback reprint of The Pencil. ~--Donna Seaman

Kirkus Book Review

The author of The Pencil (1989) enlarges his scope to encompass the history of a multitude of everyday objects, with dazzling--sometimes dizzying--results. Grant Petroski this: Few writers can grip one's attention with the whys and wherefores of the paper clip and all its variations- -Gem clip, Queen City clip, Gothic clip, Nifty clip (``the competition is very rough, and the Gem has a solid hold on its reputation, if not its papers,'' Petroski comments with typical wit). His curiosity is driven by a crucial problem in industrial design: Is there a single guiding principle behind the evolution of tools? The conventional answer is that form follows function. Petroski proposes, however, that form follows shortcomings in function: The original two-tined fork may work well enough for carving a roast, but it won't do for spearing a sardine, so the four-tined sardine fork is invented--and thus the pastry fork, salad fork, oyster fork, and so on. Tools evolve to keep pace with the specialization of tasks (Petroski mentions several times the amazement of Karl Marx at discovering 500 different types of hammer under production in Birmingham, England). The author runs--or, rather, spirals, for repetition is his failing--through the history of invention, piling up examples. Many of these delight--e.g., that of the man who, caught without a can opener at the family picnic and forced to improvise with his car bumper, invents the pop-top lid. Other stories illustrate the evolution of motorcycles, windshield wipers, Big Mac containers, toasters, and the like. Great designers--Jacob Rabinow, Raymond Loewy--receive the spotlight; strange histories come forth (e.g., how an obscure Minnesota mining company fathered Scotch tape). Using these men and their tales like 500 hammers, Petroski artfully bangs home his basic idea until our ears ring. A lively history of design that would have gained from acknowledging the great design motto that ``less is more.'' (Forty- five illustrations--not seen.)