BRIDGES: A Project Book

This is less a project book than a pedestrian history of bridges, in which neither text nor illustrations indicate any attempt to be interesting or even clear. In one double-page discussion of arch bridges, terms introduced in the text aren't illustrated in the accompanying drawing, but they show up in the next drawing combined with a new concept, the cutwater--which is confusingly presented in both text and drawing. Later passages--on the material of modern bridges, for example, or the length of the Verrazano--make slightly better reading, but Scott Corbett handled the whole subject of Bridges (1978) with considerably more care, depth, and style. This includes unelaborated directions for making an arch, a moving, and a suspension bridge--a marginal plus that doesn't carry the project.