Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America
Henry Petroski's lyrical history of bridge builders in America is organized around five engineers: James Eads (inventor of the diving bell, which  bridged Mississippi at St. Louis); Theodore Cooper (railroad bridge engineer and designer of the ill-fated Quebec Bridge); Gustav Lindenthal (Hell Gate Bridge, New York); Othmar Ammann (George Washington and Verrazano-Narrow bridges); and David Steinman (Mackinac bridge). Petroski's opening and closing chapters, "Imagine" and "Realize," remind us how a bridge starts out as a dream of engineering, but ends as a reality of compromise and maintenance.Edward  Tennersays that "The profound contribution ofEngineers of Dreamsis to remind us that communication across generations may be the most important bridge of all."