About this item
An architectural whodunit that unlocks the secrets of a hand-built home. When Henry Petroski and his wife Catherine bought a charming but modest six-decades-old island retreat in coastal Maine, Petroski couldn't help but admire its unusual construction. An eminent expert on engineering, history, and design, he began wondering about the place's origins and evolution: Who built it, and how? What needs, materials, technologies, historical developments, and laws shaped it? How had it fared through the years with its various inhabitants? Sleuthing around dimly lit closets, knotty-pine wall panels, and even a secret passage -- but never removing so much as a nail -- Petroski zooms in on the details but also steps back to examine the structure in the context of its time and place.
About the Author
Henry Petroski is a civil engineering professor at Duke University where he specializes in failure analysis. Petroski was born in Brooklyn, New York, and in 1963, he received his bachelor's degree from Manhattan College. He graduated with his Ph. D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1968. Before beginning his work at Duke in 1980, he worked at the University of Texas at Austin from 1968-74 and for the Argonne National Laboratory from 1975-80. He has received honorary degrees from Clarkson University, Trinity College, Valparaiso University and Manhattan College. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In 2004, he was appointed to the United States Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
