Hitting the sweet spot between offering enough eye and mind candy to keep casual browsers riveted and yet also providing sufficient factual content to satisfy both assignment requirements and deeper interest...Norwood’s “A Great Idea: Engineering” are solid first choices.
Blending specific information with dramatic storytelling, these accounts of some of the world’s most ambitious construction projects all capture a sense of their awesome scale. The volumes recount massive obstacles, hazards, worker abuses, and environmental stresses. Other issues are also covered. (“The number of people who died building the Great Wall may have exceeded 1 million.”) Authors highlight the ingenious, often unique, engineering that made each project possible. Enhanced by sidebars, color photos or period images, and helpful resource lists, these titles all make riveting reading.
Series Made Simple, November 2013