A remarkably rigorous account of a bridge calamity that should be of interest to engineers.
A debut work combines a detailed history of the catastrophic collapse of the Quebec Bridge in 1907 and an account of the official ethical pledge taken by Canadian engineers.
The plan to construct the Quebec Bridge extending over the St. Lawrence River was a monumental one, unprecedented at the time for its scope and complexity. Levert impressively chronicles every facet of its yearslong design and construction, including the political and financial context of the project. Tragically, that bridge collapsed in 1907, killing dozens of men, a disaster that was the subject of an official inquiry conducted by a Royal Commission. The author furnishes a magisterially thorough and incisive discussion of the investigation and concludes that it neglected to consider the whole “organizational context” of the debacle, including the Canadian government’s inexcusable lack of oversight. Levert also tells the story of the genesis of the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, an oath taken by new engineers. The brainchild of Herbert E.T. Haultain, a famed engineer, the pledge was composed by Rudyard Kipling. Haultain meant for that oath to not only function as a binding statement of moral obligation, but also a tableau of the engineering community’s “tribal soul.” The author intelligently and thematically connects the two tales by the fact that the pledge is ultimately a call for humility and the bridge disaster was the consequence of breathtaking hubris, especially on the part of the chief engineer, Theodore Cooper. Levert’s research is impeccable and his prose unfailingly lucid, making for an informative and compelling read. But this is a book written by an engineer for engineers—the microscopic attention to technical details is unlikely to sustain the attention of a layperson.
A remarkably rigorous account of a bridge calamity that should be of interest to engineers.Pub Date: March 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5255-6220-4
Page Count: 276
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
