Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of more than a dozen books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, and Arrowsic, Maine.
Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of more than a dozen books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, and Arrowsic, Maine.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of more than a dozen books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, and Arrowsic, Maine.
"Very engaging and wonderfully informative.... The Pencil unfolds a
history of invention, craftsmanship, engineering, manufacture and
business that is also at times a history of cultural life on both
sides of the Atlantic...No reader of this book will ever be able to
pick up a pencil again without marveling."
-- Hilton Kramer, Newsday
"So engrossing that I read it through in one sitting... An utterly
absorbing history
-- Martin Gardner, Raleigh News and Observer
"Beguiling...surprising, entertaining, informative. One could
scarcely ask a book to be more!... using the story of the pencil as
a paradigm, Petroski shows how the process of engineering unfolds
and [how] the pencil is the end result of process that parallels
those by which products of much greater sophistication --
computers, for example -- are invented designed manufactured and
improved."
-- Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"A serious and charming history... Petroski argues his case with
wry humor and an amplitude of anecdotage drawn from many centuries
and continents. The Pencil is that great rarity, a book that will
appeal to ordinary readers and yet seems destined as well to become
a minor classic in academe."
-- Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic
"You will never feel the same about the pencil after you read this
terrific book."
-- Larry King, USA Today
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