The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

On Memorial Day 1889, a storm struck western Pennsylvania. Floods were common enough in the mountain community of Johnstown and the surrounding villages. This one was extraordinary. Upstream the valley sat a structure that was poised to make the flood much worse, the dam at South Fork Reservoir.

David McCullough describes the flood and the devastating dam break in The Johnstown Flood. It was the worst disaster in the United States up until its time with more than 2,000 people killed by the huge wave that swept down the valley, with more killed by fire and disease in the aftermath.

The dam had originally built by the State of Pennsylvania too supply water for a canal. Within a few years the canal was closed because the railroad provided freight and passenger transportation through the area. The dam changed hands several times after that. I fell into disrepair. Somewhere along the line someone salvaged the pipes that allowed one to control the water level behind the dam; though in it partly collapsed state it no longer held much water.

This changed when developers bought the dam and surrounding property to build a resort for the wealthy industrialists of Pittsburgh. The dam was rebuilt with indifference to materials and methods. The drain pipes were never restored. The spillway was obstructed by a grate (to keep the fish in the stocked lake from disappearing downstream) and low bridge. By the time of the flood, perhaps since it was repaired, there was a slight dip in the center of the dam, creating an unknown, unprotected second spillway. This dip was hard to see with the eye on the large dam, but a survey to measure the elevations would have turned it up.

The dam filled and the lake became quite large. The vacationers sailed ships on it. The water level was commonly within a couple of feet of the spillway, and there was no practical way for the dam operators to control that water level. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

Many of the people of Johnstown expressed concern that the dam was a danger to the city. However, the prevailing view was that the wealthy elite of Pittsburgh would have it built right; very few endeavored to assess it for themselves. Similarly, the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, including such prominences as Andrew Carnegie, had faith that the developer did the work right, and they put no effort into checking it out.

When the floodwaters overtopped the earthen dam, it collapsed quickly, unleashing a deadly wave of possibly 20 million tons of water. It is hard to imagine the devastation caused by the wave, even 15 miles downstream in Johnstown. McCullough describes it, sometimes in great detail, based on reports from the time. The rolling wall of water seems awesome at first, but as it begins to destroy homes and injure and kill people, it becomes sickening as well.

The people of that valley recovered with admirable speed and took over the cleanup and restoration of their town the very next day. Soon aid came from across the country, and especially from elsewhere in Pennsylvania, including the National Guard and a still young American Red Cross.

As the initial terror of the event subsided, attention turned to the club at South Fork. Though the press, including the Engineering News, laid blame on the club and the shoddy, unprofessional work done to rebuild the dam, the courts never held the club or its members accountable. The courts, mostly in Pittsburgh where club members held sway, accepted that it was an act of God. It’s clear to more objective observers that a properly built dam would probably have survived the flood, or at the very least would have had a much less damaging failure. Though McCullough suggests the residents of Johnstown and the members of the club were too trusting, he does not shy away from the negligence of those who rebuilt the dam in a way that would almost surely lead to the disaster that came.

David McCollough also wrote

The Great Bridge

The Wright Brothers

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Brooklyn Bridge by Judith St. George

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

Genesis

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

On a Grander Scale by Lisa Jardine

On the Mainlines by William B. Claycomb

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

Road to the Sea by Florence Dorsey

McCullough, David. The Johnstown Flood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.

The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven

Psychologist David Niven draws lessons from scientific studies on happiness in The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People. The book has 100 short chapters. Each has a recommendation based on the results of research. The book was published in 2000 and the research cited was published in the mid- to late-1990s.

As you might expect from such a structure, the book seems to go all over the place. Even so, some themes and trends are readily discernable.

For instance, relationships have a profound effect on happiness—more important than our material possessions. If we have close relationships with friends or family, we are much more likely to feel good about ourselves. Supportiveness in relationships is important to our happiness and it works both ways—giving and receiving. Being a good friend is as important as having friends; follow through on your commitments. Make peace with others; the pain of working through the conflict is usually much less than the pain of losing a relationship. Relationships are important at every age.

A sense of purpose and goals are also important to happiness. Volunteering is a good way to find a sense of purpose; helping others can help us feel better. Goals should be realistic—working toward and attaining goals feels good, but striving toward goals you cannot reach causes dissatisfaction. Celebrate your achievements along the way and remember them.

Your thoughts and outlook also affect your happiness. If you must assume what is motivating someone’s action, assuming the best will lead to more happiness. Don’t dwell on past problems or think of what might have been; concentrate on what you can do now to step toward where you want to go. Remember happy moments from your past to be happier today.

Related to that, be grateful for what have. Having a lot does not contribute as much to happiness as enjoying and appreciating what you have. By the way, watching television can lead to discontentment by stirring up covetousness.

There is a lot of other advice in Niven’s book. If you pick it up, you’re likely to find something that might help you be a little happier.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

Niven, David. The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientist Have Learned and How You Can Use It. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000.

Circles by James Burke

Circles is a collection of essays that science journalist James Burke wrote for Scientific American. These 50 short histories focus on science and technology, as you might expect from the magazine that originally published them. Burke also covers culture and literature, which are inextricably tangled in those other subjects anyway.

The conceit of these essays is that they start and end at more or less the same place, making a circle. These trips through history, like history itself, are hardly tidy little circles. Burke skips from place to place, person to person, and period to period like a mad time traveler. The jumps are not random, each step has a connection to its predecessor, eventually finding a connection back to the starting point. Even so, the effect is sometimes chaotic.

I think Burke wanted to convey something of the chaos of history. It is easy to look at the history of some bit of science or technology and see it as a clearly delineated arc. We make superhighways from early concept to full-fledged idea and fly by everything else without noticing it. Burke takes the scenic route, noting the oddball side trips and serendipitous stumbles that are the typical milestones of our creeping advancement in knowledge.

The approach doesn’t allow Burke to dive deep into any subject, but that is not what he wanted to do. That is why I would recommend it to other amateur historians. You can play the honeybee with Burke, flitting from flower to flower and sipping the nectar of each. Along the way you are likely something that intrigues you. You could start a historical journey of your own.

James Burke also wrote The Pinball Effect.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

The Brooklyn Bridge by Judith St. George

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The Great Bridge by David McCollough

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

The Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst

Majestie by David Teems

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

On a Grander Scale by Lisa Jardine

The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Burke, James. Circles: 50 Round Trips through History, Technology, Science, Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

Hedwig Kiesler was a headstrong Austrian girl with visions of becoming a Hollywood star. She was so determined that she dropped out of school to star working at a Berlin film studio, and by 16 she was acting professionally. She eventually achieved Hollywood stardom as Hedy Lamarr.

Lamarr had another, lesser known life, as an inventor. She, along with avant-garde composer George Antheil, invented a technology that makes much of modern communication possible. Richard Rhodes focuses on this part of Lamarr’s life in Hedy’s Folly.

The woman known for her beauty was interested in technology from youth. She enjoyed walking with her father, a banker, who explained how things worked. Her first marriage was to munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl. Though she was mostly a trophy to be shown off to his friends, she paid close attention as he and the people he entertained discussed weapons and other technology. When she moved to Hollywood, she sat up a little shop in her home and took up inventing as a hobby.

When Lamarr learned of the sinking by U-boats that were intended to carry children from Britain to safer locations in Canada, she put her head to the idea of improved torpedoes to combat the underwater threat. The torpedo would be remote controlled. To avoid attempts to jam the signal, the torpedo receiver and controller transmitter would can radio frequencies rapidly in a synchronized manner.  She enlisted the assistance of Antheil, who had experience trying to control and synchronize multiple player pianos, to work out a practical implementation of the concept.

The idea was received well by the National Inventors Council, apparently even receiving the endorsement of automotive engineer Charles Kettering. The Navy did not think the idea was practical, but it did by the patent that was awarded to the Hollywood pair in 1941. Eventually, the frequency-hopping technology invented by Lamarr was developed by the U.S. military for many communication applications.

Spread spectrum, a somewhat broader category of radio communication of which frequency-hopping was the original type, was unveiled from the military secrecy in 1976 with the publication of a textbook on the subject by Robert C. Dixon. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved fairly quickly to make room in the radio spectrum for applications of spread spectrum. These were mostly junk frequencies that had been set aside for non-communication uses. Because it broadcast on multiple frequencies, spread spectrum is less likely to be disrupted by interference by other transmissions, like a microwave (Lamarr invented frequency hopping to avoid jamming). Another important aspect of the FCC rule was that these frequencies could be used without a license.

This technology is widely used today. Wi-fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and RFID all use spread spectrum communication. It is the basis of the wireless communication between computers that has shaped the way we live, work, and behave in coffeehouses.

Lamarr and Antheil didn’t receive much recognition for their groundbreaking invention until after it started making its way into American households and pockets. In 1997, Lamarr (and posthumously Antheil) received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award when she was 82 years old. By then she had retired to a very private life in Florida, where she live until January 2000.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

Professional Amateur by T. A. Boyd

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Rhodes, Richard. Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. New York: Doubleday, 2011.

Life's Matrix by Philip Ball

Water is a chemical essential to human life and culture, and it is possibly the oddest common substance. Physicist and science writer Philip Ball describes the nature of water, both scientific and cultural, in Life’s Matrix (originally published in the United Kingdom as H2O: A Biography of Water).

Ball begins at the very beginning—the big bang. Hydrogen, the simplest atom and most abundant element in the universe, appeared early in the universe. Oxygen is forged in stars and has become the third most abundant element. There is water in space. Ice seems to be common in the far reaches of the solar system. It has been found on the moon and stars and a few molecules appear in the cooler spots on the sun.

We have found no worlds yet that have as much liquid water as ours. The water cycle has shaped Earth. Our weather comes largely from the interplay of water and energy. Even the water locked up in the ice of our poles and glaciers shape the land, influence the weather, and affect the movement of heat, water and salt in ocean currents.

Ball tackles all phases of water, including a few exotic forms that only occur in extreme conditions created in laboratories. That water exists as vapor, liquid, and solid within the fairly narrow range of temperatures that are common on Earth make it unique. This is just one of its unusual properties. The structure of the water molecule is described in the book along with the physics that explain its behavior, to the degree that such things are even known.

Our understanding of water as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen is a relatively recent thing. For a long time, water was thought of as an irreducible element. This makes sense on some level. Water is essential to life as we know it. It is irreplaceable. From the perspective of living creatures, and in almost every culture, water is a fundamental material.

In the final chapter, Ball moves away from the hard sciences to culture, economics and policy. Water of the quality needed for drinking, and even the lesser quality needed for other things, is scarce and unevenly distributed on the planet. To take a serious look at water is to be drawn to issues of health and wealth. Growing population and changing climate will put increased demands on the available fresh water, and we need to consider how we are going to manage it. Ball takes a look at some of the hot spots.

The book is intended for a broad audience. I think it is probably more accessible to someone with some education in the sciences, especially chemistry or physics, but someone had a high-school level class in these subjects they should be able to follow along.

In addition, the book is 16 years old, so necessarily out of date in some respects. I suspect that much of the physics, chemistry and biology described is still sound. Similarly, there is unlikely to be discoveries in history that would seriously outdate the book, even in the interesting section on dead ends and “pathology” in water science.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Necessity by Rose George

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Elixir by Brian Fagan

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

Ball, Philip. Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water. 1999. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

In Double Your Brain Power, Jean Marie Stine doesn’t tell you how to make your brain more powerful. She tells you how to get more out of the power your brain already has.

There are five major areas of brainpower covered by the book: learning, memory, reading, listening and thinking. Under each part, a few short chapters introduce specific techniques for improving performance.

I was particularly interested in the chapter on reading. I read a lot for pleasure and work. If I can get my work reading out of the way more quickly, I’ll be able to manage my other duties better. If I can read more books, I’ll be able to post more reviews on my blog. I’ve picked up some books on speed-reading and found the techniques to be so tedious that I never followed through on developing the skill. Stine doesn’t try to teach speed-reading. Her focus is on reading smarter, getting the information you need without reading every word, and remembering the important information. The techniques probably won’t help you get through Moby Dick in a day (though they might get you through it faster than if you didn’t use them), but they probably will help you plow through the paperwork, memos, and reports that come across your desk.

I also paid close attention to the chapter on memory. If you’ve read books on mnemonics, you’ll have seen some of the techniques Stine includes. The down side of mnemonics is it takes time and effort to be good as using the techniques. Fortunately, this is not the only, or even the primary, thing in the chapter.  There are effective, and easily mastered, methods for remembering better that Stine includes.

There are recurring themes that apply to many areas of brainpower. Be attentive. Relax because your brain works better when you relax. Believe you can do better and have a firm intention of improving. Focus and concentration improve all areas of brainpower. Make connections to the things you want to learn and remember, both to things you know and to your personal experiences. Use your feelings as well as you thoughts. Review important information.

Double Your Brain Power is almost a model how-to book. It focuses on specific areas one may want to improve and skills for making those improvements. Stine built some of the skills she teaches into the structure of the book, especially reviewing. The reviews are very brief, so the book does not seem repetitive. Illustrative stories are few, brief, and directly related to the skills discussed.

This structure lends itself to including a lot of information and to brevity. I find that to be a very good quality in a nonfiction book.

In addition, Stine follows the old adage about speaking or teaching: “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them.” This is not as bad as it sounds. Stine does not linger on introductions and reviews. They serve their purpose of reinforcing the major points briefly.

Double Your Brain Power does not have a great deal of original concepts, and the author readily acknowledges when ideas or techniques are adapted from others sources. The advantage of this book is that it brings many useful skills together, gets to the point and describes them briefly.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Stine, Jean Marie. Double Your Brain Power. 1997. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2000.

STEM Books

I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related books (and counting).  STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  As you may have seen in the news, there is a push to improve STEM education, interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers in these fields.  The idea is that these will be the skills needed by workers of the future.  If you’re a STEM educator or a student considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of these books.

I’ll confess that I’m not an educator, but I think most of these books will be accessible to high school and college students, and a few to middle school students.  The list is also a reflection of my career and interests in engineering, public health, policy, and history.  Even with these biases, I think it is a good list for someone looking for STEM-related books.

How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty

I was fascinated by robots as a kid.  I enjoyed reading Isaac Asimov’s robot stories.  I longed for the Omnibot 2000 in the Sears Wishbook.

Robots have come a long way.  In How to Build an Android, David F. Dufty describes the short strange life of a very complex robot made to look and talk like science fiction author Philip K. Dick.  The robot had a very sophisticated and lifelike head and complex artificial intelligence.  As with most complex things, it was the work of many people who had to solve a lot of problems.

If you’re interested in robotics, this is an interesting nontechnical book.  In addition, you’ll get introduced to some freaky sci-fi.  You may even get as (somewhat) legitimate reason to use the word “Dickhead” (capitalized, it refers to a fan of PKD, so don’t go using it on anyone).

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways by Earl Swift

The Interstate highway system in the United States is one of the most enormous structures built.  Some of the prospective STEM students who read this may actually be younger than the Intestate system, though in some sense it is never complete because it needs constant repair and maintenance.  The Interstates were completed in the 1990s, but the Federal-Aid Highways go back to 1916.

Earl Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads.  If you interested in automobiles or transportation, it’s a good read.

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Deborah Cadbury describes seven wonders of engineering in Dreams of Iron and Steel.  It covers almost a century of history, but many of the events are concentrated in the Victorian Era.  That was a time of great technological innovation.

Though the book is history, many of the structures still stand.  Railways, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Suez and Panama Canals, and Hoover Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Though the memory of Professor Wragg’s sneer prompts me to not make this confession, part of my interest in science and technology came from comic books.  Iron Man was cool.  Spider-Man’s web shooters were very cool.  Superhero comics are full of fantasy, admittedly, but the strange, unrealistic science and technology they depict have inspired many to study STEM in reality.

Physicist John Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes.  Sometimes comics get there science right.  Even when they get it wrong, it can be instructive.  If you know what people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this book to be a great introduction to physics.

1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics by David Acheson

Here is another confession: I’m not especially interested in math.  I endured a lot of math classes to study engineering.  Reading David Acheson’s 1089 and All That did not require such endurance.  For one reason, it is a short book.  For another, Acheson doesn’t expect his readers to be mathematicians; it is enough to follow the outline of the math he discusses.

I recommend this book because so many people have a fear of math.  1089 can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math phobias.  Just take a deep breath, relax, and follow along as well as you can.  You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a way.

The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said it Couldn’t be Built by Judith St. George

Judith St. George’s The Brooklyn Bridge is a short history of and iconic bridge.  Written for the bridge’s 100^th anniversary, it is also the story of the engineers who sacrificed life and health to see it completed: John Roebling and his son Washington.  John Roebling was a German immigrant who built many suspension bridges and owed a wire-making business.  He gave his son and extraordinary education in bridge engineering for the time, and before beginning work on the Brooklyn Bridge he served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Why should a cutting-edge STEM student read about a bridge that is almost 130 years old?  It’s because we still use and rely on very successful, centuries old technologies.  Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an important part of our economy.  As recently as 2010, New York City and the federal government committed $500 million to repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski

STEM lumps together science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Is there a difference between science and engineering?  Is it important?

Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes there is an important difference.  At heart, science is about increasing knowledge.  Engineering is about invention.  Of course, new knowledge makes new invention possible.  Just as often, though, engineering runs ahead of science.  Sometimes science didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments to conduct new observations and experiments.  The invention of the microscope made possible the science of microbiology.  Steam engines were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific understanding of thermodynamics.  In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science (study of natural things) or branch of physics.

Petroski’s focus in the book is the importance of engineering to policymaking, where it is often overshadowed by science.  Policy, science, and engineering play off of each other a lot.  Most of my career as an engineer has been related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

The Ghost Map by science writer Steven Johnson is the story of the birth of epidemiology.  Epidemiology is a medical science that uses statistics to help us understand how diseases operate in a population.  Using various statistical and geographic tools, long before we had computers and GIS, physician John Snow demonstrated that cholera, once a recurring plague that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in some outbreaks, was a waterborne disease.  This understanding, initially met with much skepticism, allowed officials to intervene to prevent the spread of the disease.  For those who say of their math classes, “I’ll never us this,” here is a case where math (and science and policy) were used to make a great difference.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

It is not much publicized today that the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806 had a partly scientific mission.  Captains Lewis and Clark were charges with bringing back samples of the flora, fauna, and culture of the western territories.  It was also hoped that they would find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean.  In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes about the scientific mission as well as the policy, diplomacy, and commercial hopes the expedition carried.

Of course, what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition is that it was a great adventure.  There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful adventurers and explorers. 

Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson

A list like this deserves something strange, creepy, and more fun than you care to admit.  Right now, thousands of very young future STEM workers are catching bugs and snakes, breaking their toys to see what is inside, or staring into space with a weird expression of vacancy and concentration.

Jan Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a morbid book.  It is sometimes humorous, especially in consideration of topic.  From a STEM point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over time.  The fears and activities of our forefathers may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of what they knew.  Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility.  Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.

If you’re looking for something for a younger student, check out this post→ from Joanne Loves Science or these recommendations→ from STEM Friday.  By the way, I also write about engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.

Google