Marshall Brain

So this book, like the Biology book, has a simple structure; one side is printed with words and the other side has an image relating to the engineering marvel we are talking about. Now, engineers might not have invented a lot of the things in this book, but they make the idea more practical and cost effective. Take the Wright Flyer of 1903. It was made of wood and cloth and went at a speed that was not all that impressive. Over the years, planes have come to their own in being made of stronger materials and having better propulsion systems. This was all done by teams of engineers working to improve stuff.

Not that there aren't mistakes or missteps out there. The book also lists the Hindenburg disaster, the Chernobyl disaster, the Fukushima Plant disaster and others.

All throughout the book, you can feel the reverence that Marshall Brain feels for these men and women that have made life easier for the billions of us that live on this planet. It goes slightly into the Science Fiction genre at the end, but not entirely. The final few entries are for things that have yet to be invented and can only have an estimated date. They are Vactrains, Brain Replication, Mars Colony and Things We Have Yet To Engineer. All of these things are unfeasible with our current technology, and Mr. Brain explains why, so I suppose they make sense in being in there.

Things we have Yet to Engineer could cover a whole book on itself I am sure. A lot of them are silly ideas, or taken from movies and thus have no basis in current science. For instance, it mentions the Flying Car as something that would present a host of problems due to cost, stability and weight concerns. However, the author does have hopes for the future. After all, the communicator in Star Trek was a lot like the cell phones of today, and that only took them about thirty years. I certainly look forward to what people are capable of.… (mere)

I really wanted to like this book, but I simply could not get past the first few pages, despite my full-hearted agreement with the themes and purposes of this book. I agree on the critique of society that this book tries to make, and I agree on the need for a Basic Income (though not necessarily for the same reasons or from the same economic reasoning that the author seems to use). But, I found the writing just too stilted and difficult to get past, so I was never able to suspend disbelief long enough to get into the book. Sorry.… (mere)

I really wanted to like this book, but I simply could not get past the first few pages, despite my full-hearted agreement with the themes and purposes of this book. I agree on the critique of society that this book tries to make, and I agree on the need for a Basic Income (though not necessarily for the same reasons or from the same economic reasoning that the author seems to use). But, I found the writing just too stilted and difficult to get past, so I was never able to suspend disbelief long enough to get into the book. Sorry.… (mere)