Lessons Amid the Rubble: An Introduction to Post-Disaster Engineering and Ethics (Pfatteicher, S.K.A.; 2010) [Book Review]

For years, engineer and author Henry Petroski has been reminding us that engineers can learn from failures as much or more than they can learn from success. The author here has taken at his word in this book. The author uses the events of September 11, 2001, as the basis for an extended and historically-informed meditation on what engineers can learn from the disaster of the World Trade Center attacks. The result is a book that can be read fruitfully by audiences as diverse as undergraduate engineers studying engineering ethics, and historians concerned about the ramifications to engineering of the failures??and successes of such atrocities. This book is much more than a critical review of the technical details of the 9/11 attacks. One of the major themes is the conflicts and even contradictions built into the profession of engineering.