Technology:

Animal-powered Machines

Written by J.Kenneth Major

Format: Trade Paperback, 40 pages
On Sale: October 21, 2008
Price: $11.95

This is a book about a little known element in the history of motive power, the animal powered machine. Windmills and watermills survive in most parts of Britain, but animal-powered machines, whether vertical treadwheels or horizontal horse engines, are hardly known, despite the significant contribution they made to the history of... Read more >

Firecrackers!
An Eye-Popping Collection of Chinese Firework Art
Written by Warren Dotz, Jack Mingo and George Moyer

Format: Hardcover, 112 pages
On Sale: July 1, 2008
Price: $14.95

Firecrackers, sparklers, and rockets offer maximum flash for minimum cash, and over the years, manufacturers have created dazzling labels to hype their pyrotechnic products. FIRECRACKERS! pays tribute to this eye-popping art form, featuring some of the most vibrant and eccentric labels from the 1950s and 1960s. Conjuring memories of outdoor celebrations... Read more >

Laundry Bygones

Written by Pamela Sambrook

Format: Trade Paperback, 32 pages
On Sale: March 4, 2008
Price: $11.95

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Old Stationary Engines

Written by D.W. Edgington

Format: Trade Paperback, 56 pages
On Sale: March 4, 2008
Price: $12.95

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Small Things Considered
Why There Is No Perfect Design
Written by Henry Petroski

Format: eBook, 304 pages
On Sale: December 18, 2007
Price: $14.95

Henry Petroski, “America’s poet laureate of technology” (Kirkus Reviews)–author of The Pencil and The Evolution of Useful Things–now gives us an entertaining and perceptive study of design in everyday life, while revealing the checkered pasts, and some possible futures, of familiar objects.

Chairs, lightbulbs, cup holders, toothbrushes, doorknobs, light switches, potato peelers... Read more >

Support and Resist
Structural Engineers and Design Innovation
Written by Nina Rappaport

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
On Sale: November 1, 2007
Price: $50.00

As architectural projects have grown larger and more complex, as materials have become more specialized and advanced, as the world's cities have developed in size and density, the collaborative partnership of architects and structural engineers has gained prominence. Many of the major works of the early twenty-first century would have been... Read more >

Water-Works
The Architecture and Engineering of the New York City Water Supply
Edited by Kevin Bone and Gina Pollara
Contribution by Albert F. Appleton

Format: Hardcover, 268 pages
On Sale: January 1, 2007
Price: $50.00

The fresh, clean taste of New York's water is legendary. Less well known is the fascinating story of the massive program of exploration and construction that was required to achieve such purity. The story of that monumental undertaking is told in Water-Works and illustrated with an astonishing archive of drawings and... Read more >

Small Things Considered
Why There Is No Perfect Design
Written by Henry Petroski

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
On Sale: September 14, 2004
Price: $14.95

Why has the durable paper shopping bag been largely replaced by its flimsy plastic counterpart? What circuitous chain of improvements led to such innovations as the automobile cup holder and the swiveling vegetable peeler? With the same relentless curiosity and lucid, witty prose he brought to his earlier books, Henry Petroski... Read more >

Parting the Desert
The Creation of the Suez Canal
Written by Zachary Karabell

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
On Sale: May 11, 2004
Price: $15.00

Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world.

The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de... Read more >

Parting the Desert
The Creation of the Suez Canal
Written by Zachary Karabell

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
On Sale: May 20, 2003
Price: $27.50

The building of the Suez Canal was considered the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century, but, as Zachary Karabell shows, it was much more than a marvel of construction. It was a moment when the dreams and hopes of two cultures, several states, and thousands of ordinary people converged to... Read more >

Firecrackers
The Art and History
Written by Warren Dotz, Jack Mingo and George Moyer

Format: Trade Paperback, 144 pages
On Sale: July 1, 2000
Price: $19.95

Universally popular, uncommonly loud, a pyrotechnic spectacle that inspires laughter, delight and a healthy dose of frayed nerves—what else but the firecracker! These little sticks of paper and powder have captured the imagination of cultures the world over since the Chinese invented them centuries ago. As practical, chemical developments in firecracker... Read more >