Think Like An Engineer: Inside the Minds that are Changing our Lives
£0.90
‘Smart, insightful, and fascinating.’ Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa – the world’s tallest building – looks nothing like Microsoft’s Office Suite, and digital surround sound doesn’t work like a citywide telecommunication grid. Yet these engineering feats have much in common: they are the result of a unique thinking process combining abstract and structured thinking, common sense and great imagination. They are born of the engineering mindset.
In this groundbreaking and lively work, Guru Madhavan reveals the extraordinary influence of engineering on society, not just today but throughout history. Drawing on a cast of star engineers like Steve Jobs, the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison, Madhavan explores aspects of this mindset and shows its usefulness to life and business – in areas as varied as traffic congestion to health care to filmmaking. Full of case studies and practical insights spanning the brilliant history of engineering, Think Like an Engineer is in equal parts personal, practical, and profound. It reveals how key engineering concepts can help you make better decisions and create innovative solutions in a complex world.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Oneworld Publications (20 Aug. 2015) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 430 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Not Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 211 pages |
by Critic
Featured on BBC Radio 4 on More or Less, in a BA airline magazine, and an LSE lecture – Mr Madhavan provides an insightful view into the world of the engineering mindset. Further than our image of NASA engineers with pocket protectors, this is a book that changes this perception with a collection of delightful anecdotes and stories. We only think of engineers when things go wrong – time to have a better understanding of the role of engineers in the world around us.
by CRC007
Brilliant book.
by Paul B
Not really for engineers.
by HB
My son found this very helpful in preparing for university interviews at Imperial and Cambridge.
by CharlesA
I don’t like giving authors a hard time, they mostly work inordinately hard to bring the contents of their work to a readership.
Guru Madhavan, writes extremely well and with great clarity, it’s as if he’s swallowed the Malcolm Gladwell canon whole and I’d say his writing is very much indistinguishable from the master.
While I was reading this book, the word ‘curate’s egg’ kept popping into my mind and lo and behold, he uses the very expression towards the end of the book. Madhavan has an impressive back story and the blurb of the book looks like all his high-powered friends chipped in to talk it up (I’m merely speculating here)
I actually enjoyed this book, but I only gave it 3 stars for 2 reasons, the first is that it really lacks any flow and coherence and the second is that it doesn’t really fulfil the promise of the title, you don’t think like an engineer at the end and the main reason is that he loosely centres each chapter around some engineering concept or constraint and then riffs with some well-written but not terribly deep or well connected anecdotes. You have chapters called things like ‘optimising’ , ‘solutions under constraints’, ‘prototyping’ and it never all gels properly.
He makes this attempt to make it all gel by mentioning in most chapters the rivalry between two cannon designers in the French army that is boring and feels forced.
All in all, worth reading, I actually recommend that you read it, it’s short and enjoyable, but it’s not 5 stars because a better thinker would have made a far more satisfying book when the brief was ‘Think like an engineer’, why with some constructive criticism, even Madhavan himself could vastly improve this book.
by Timothy Bates
Well written with good examples that don’t simply create an engaging narrative, but integrate with summaries of what the most thoughtful and considered engineer’s have distilled regarding what it is that makes for a good engineering mind. Some fairly lengthy idiosyncratic sections that dilute the main thread.
by Amazon Customer
No relation between book title and its content. It is kind of money stealing by giving amazing title. I don’t recommend this book.
by Jasenka Ra[ajic
Brilliant book, fast delivery.