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28 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 Parts you slog through, parts you gobble Dec 21, 1999
By Louise Dana
Salvadori clearly explains, with the invaluable aid of lots of little pictures, how and why buildings stand up. There are chapters on cathedrals, the Eiffel Tower, the Hagia Sophia, bridges, domes, and so forth. The chapter on wind is particularly fascinating--I found out a lot of things I'd had no idea of. Other chapters, like "Form-Resistant Structures," were pretty deadly dull. Overall, though, the book was well worth reading. It's not always entertaining, but it's always informative, and sometimes tremendously interesting.
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 clear and understandable Nov 26, 2001
By J. head
This is a book that sums-up alot of material about loads, properties of building materials, beams and columns, and translates it into the strength of modern structures. I found the book fascinating and it answered many questions, among them why the height vs base of the pyramids automatically contain the value of PI. This book discussed the anchoring of todays skyscrapers and large structures. This is a book that explains where the forces and loads are projected and how they are contained and countered without getting into the mathematical aspect of it. This author did an excellent job in conveying
the logic behind structural engineering. Well done.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Why do buildings keep standing up? Jun 10, 2004
By M. Buisman
This book was recommended to me by my architecture professor and it is well worth reading. Without going into too much physics the author explains clearly the importance of forces like wind on structures like bridges, skyscrapers, domes etc. To illustrate these infuences there are chapters on some of the architectural wonders of the world: Eiffel Tower, Pyramids, Brooklyn Bridge and Aya Sofia to name but a few. There are no photographs in this book but crudely drawn pictures, which actually makes the reader understand the concepts better. If you like buildings and architecture in general this book is instrumental in the understandings of why buildings stand up.
18 of 24 found the following review helpful:
 Ok but gets a little fruity. Mar 30, 2006
Overall this book gives good information on building, general techniques and general material usage. It pretty well covers all of the big general building concepts and is suitable for a structural or civil engineering novice.
However, there are a few problems I found with the author and the parts of his character that he put in the book. Mainly centering around his compulsion to make all things mystical or special in some way that they are not deserving.
First of all he refers to a computer as a "slave". Why does he feel the need to personify the computer? I have a few ideas but they are beyond the scope of this review.
Next he dedicates an entire chapter to The Eiffel Tower and in this chapter, his tones are as if he nearly worships the thing. From an engineering perspective, this seems a bit silly. There was no special feat in building the tower as it only has to hold itself up with very little extra. It has no solid walls to catch the wind, so it didn't even have to be braced in that regard. Further the tower serves no real purpose other than to just give a view of Paris, so I fail to see how an architect or civil engineer could hold it in such high regard.
My last complaint about the book is that in nearly every chapter he tends to digress from the topic and go on some mystical, political or social rant that usually only lasts for one or two lines and a paragraph at most. The most irritating of which is on Page 141 where speaking of the building of the Panama Canal by the French (and Eiffel) he says "A combination of bribes, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and hostility from the United States put a sudden end to this gigantic endeavor". Ignoring the factual standing of his statements for the moment, such blatantly socially "agenda-ized" remarks have no place in a book about architecture.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A little more zip could have made it much more entertaining Dec 04, 2005
By Allan Bedford
"Author of The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide"
The technical side of this book is superb. The simple line drawings help to explain some of the classic and even complex concepts of engineering as applied to architecture. What's missing unfortunately is a bit of soul. The book tends toward the dry side of technical writing and that can be a dive from which it's difficult to recover. There seems to be a lack of the human element in the writing that can (when present) be effective in adding greater interest to scientific topics.
As a textbook, for use in classes or courses at the high school level or above, this book is probably better than most. It's not so dull as to be unreadable. And it presents some wonderful and wonderfully useful information. As a recreational read it perhaps falls a bit short and thus I'm giving it 4 starts, though shading toward 4 and a half.
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