A history of MIT, doubling as a glimpse at the gonzo world of the modern engineer. The infinite corridor of the title refers to the 762-foot-long hallway that runs through five contiguous buildings behind the entrance hall of MIT, arguably the best science school in the world. But it also suggests the endless vistas of discovery that welcome those who join MIT's madcap, almost all-male, engineering fraternity. Hapgood (Why Males Exist, 1979) begins with a typical instance of this gang's by-the-bootstraps ingenuity, showing how an Armani-suited MIT inventor devises a gadget to turn sheets on a music stand while the musician keeps his hands on his instrument. The essence of the method is trial-and-error, plus a massive dollop of intuition—but it wasn't always like this. MIT was founded in 1865 for ``tweakers,'' engineers who made incremental improvements in existing systems. Pure research and breakthrough invention were kept in the closet until WW II, when radar was developed by MIT physicists. Since then, the school has cultivated a ``nerd'' ethos much celebrated by its students, who hold an annual ``Ugliest Man'' contest. Tensions with the arts-and-letters crowd, especially at neighboring Harvard, remain strong. Both faculty and students suffer from burnout and find relief in frivolities like square dancing and model railroading (both hobbies becoming unimaginably complicated in their MIT versions). As Hapgood demonstrates most entertainingly, MIT's essentially juvenile values—``communal bonhomie, irreverence, high tolerance for goofiness, belief in the power of fantasy, and an insistence on having total control of their own world''—have led to several major scientific revolutions, not least the age of computers. A informative look at current MIT research into holography, artificial limbs, computer driving, nanotechnology (hyper-miniaturization), and, inevitably, game-playing round out this bouncy report. Geeks and gadgets, from an admirer.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-201-08293-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
Not light reading but essential for policymakers—and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great...
An alarming account of the “slow-motion catastrophe” facing the world’s largest freshwater system.
Based on 13 years of reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this exhaustively detailed examination of the Great Lakes reveals the extent to which this 94,000-square-mile natural resource has been exploited for two centuries. The main culprits have been “over-fishing, over-polluting, and over-prioritizing navigation,” writes Egan, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Combining scientific details, the stories of researchers investigating ecological crises, and interviews with people who live and work along the lakes, the author crafts an absorbing narrative of science and human folly. The St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of locks, canals, and channels leading to the Atlantic Ocean, which allows “noxious species” from foreign ports to enter the lakes through ballast water dumped by freighters, has been a central player. Biologically contaminated ballast water is “the worst kind of pollution,” writes Egan. “It breeds.” As a result, mussels and other invasive species have been devastating the ecosystem and traveling across the country to wreak harm in the West. At the same time, farm-fertilizer runoff has helped create “massive seasonal toxic algae blooms that are turning [Lake] Erie’s water into something that seems impossible for a sea of its size: poison.” The blooms contain “the seeds of a natural and public health disaster.” While lengthy and often highly technical, Egan’s sections on frustrating attempts to engineer the lakes by introducing predator fish species underscore the complexity of the challenge. The author also covers the threats posed by climate change and attempts by outsiders to divert lake waters for profit. He notes that the political will is lacking to reduce farm runoffs. The lakes could “heal on their own,” if protected from new invasions and if the fish and mussels already present “find a new ecological balance.”
Not light reading but essential for policymakers—and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24643-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
It took 14 years to build and it cost 15 million dollars and the lives of 20 workmen. Like the Atlantic cable and the Suez Canal it was a gigantic embodiment in steel and concrete of the Age of Enterprise. McCullough's outsized biography of the bridge attempts to capture in one majestic sweep the full glory of the achievement but the story sags mightily in the middle. True, the Roeblings, father and son who served successively as Chief Engineer, are cast in a heroic mold. True, too, the vital statistics of the bridge are formidable. But despite diligent efforts by the author the details of the construction work — from sinking the caissons, to underground blasting, stringing of cables and pouring of cement — will crush the determination of all but the most indomitable reader. To make matters worse, McCullough dutifully struggles through the administrative history of the Brooklyn Bridge Company which financed and contracted for the project with the help of the Tweed Machine and various Brooklyn bosses who profited handsomely amid continuous allegations of kickbacks and mismanagement of funds. He succeeds in evoking the venality and crass materialism of the epoch but once again the details — like the 3,515 miles of steel wire in each cable — are tiresome and ultimately entangling. Workmanlike and thorough though it is, McCullough's history of the bridge has more bulk than stature.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1972
ISBN: 0743217373
Page Count: 652
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972
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