Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century

Had to get it for a class I took, most of the info is available online and the book is somewhat overpriced.

The book is in excellent condition.

In this case, you can judge a book by its cover, or at least its title. Billington takes a look at the technologies (created just before or after 1900) which shaped the 20th century. For each he identifies the engineers who made the key innovations that made the technologies successful.The book is partially a history lesson, with mini-biographies of the people involved and a discussion of what the technology meant in the context of the time. But it also partially a simplified discussion of the engineering concepts, with useful sidebars and appendices that give about the same level of detail that you might find in a first year engineering lecture.It is interesting to see how some of the technologies interconnect, such as the telephone being a necessary precursor to the radio (for an understanding of how to carry a human voice over an electromagnetic signal).As an aeronautical engineer, I was mostly familiar with the history of the Wright brothers. Billington did a great job with that chapter, which gives me confidence that the other chapters are just as accurate and complete.The text is not dry and academic, but it does assume at least a practical familiarity with physics and engineering. You don't need to be an engineer to understand the book, but it does help.By the way, this book is not about computers or other things that we think of as "high tech" today. It's about the technologies that are so fundamental to our lives that we don't think of them, like the electrical power grid and the automobile. These had the same relationship to the world of 1900 that the internet has to the world of 2000.