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Spring 
u
Summer 2012 
HARVARD
 
university press
 
contents
G
ENERAL
I
NTEREST
...........1A
CADEMIC
T
RADE
..........32D
UMBARTON
O
 AKS
........46L
OEB
C
LASSICAL
L
IBRARY
48T
HE
I T
 ATTI
.................50H
UMANITIES
..................51S
OCIAL
S
CIENCE
............56P
OLITICS
& E
CONOMICS
..66L
EGAL
S
TUDIES
.............68D
ISTRIBUTED
B
OOKS
......70P
 APERBACKS
..................83B
 ACKLIST
H
IGHLIGHTS
...109R 
ECENT
H
IGHLIGHTS
.....110A
UTHOR 
/ T
ITLE
I
NDEX 
..111O
RDER 
I
NFORMATION
.....112
Cover:St. Paul’s City Skyline, London. © 2011Matthew Fleming. Getty ImagesInside front cover:“Girl’s Head: A Fantasy”by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1897.Cecil French Bequest, Hammersmithand Fulham Council, London /The Bridgeman Art Librarycatalog design:sheila barrett-smith
 
www.hup.harvard.edu 
m
harvard university press
1
To Forgive Design
UNDERSTANDING FAILURE
H
ENRY
P
ETROSKI
 When planes crash, bridges collapse, and automobile gas tanks explode, we are quick to blamepoor design. But Henry Petroski says we must look beyond design for causes and corrections.Known for his masterly explanations of engineering successes and failures, Petroski here takeshis analysis a step further, to consider the larger context in which accidents occur.In
To Forgive Design 
he surveys some of the most infamous failures of our time, fromthe 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse and the toppling of a massive Shanghai apartment build-ing in 2009, to Boston’s prolonged Big Dig and the 2010 Gulf oil spill. These avoidable disasters reveal the interdependency of people and machines within systems whose complex behav-ior was undreamt of by their designers, until it was too late.Petroski shows that even the simplest technology is embeddedin cultural and socioeconomic constraints, complications, andcontradictions.Failure to imagine the possibility of failure is the mostprofound mistake engineers can make. Software developersrealized this early on and looked outside their young field, tostructural engineering, as they sought a historical perspectiveto help them identify their own potential mistakes. By explain-ing the interconnectedness of technology and culture and thedangers that can emerge from complexity, Petroski demon-strates that we would all do well to follow their lead.
BELKNAP PRESSMARCH
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TECHNOLOGY / ENGINEERINGISBN 
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HENRY PETROSKI
isthe Aleksandar S. VesicProfessor of CivilEngineering andProfessor of History atDuke University.
ALSO BY
HENRY PETROSKI
Invention by Design:How Engineers Getfrom Thought to Thing
HUP | $.s| pb
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