This book provides an engineer’s-eye view of the evolution of dozens of objects that most of us use all the time, from paper clips to forks to zippers to hammers. It’s fascinating to take a look at the process of invention and improvement of devices that ‘improve’ our lives.

I would have liked to see this book a little more suited to a general audience though. The subject matter is definately something that could interest a whole spectrum of readers, but there’s a lot of Latin, and all kinds of polysyllabic words, neither of which is probably necessary. It would be nice if it were readable without being work, yanno?

A definite must read for engineers or like-minded geeky people.

I found this book surprisingly practical, too. On a recent trip to Seoul, I read the whole chapter on the evolution of the fork on the plane, just as I was struggling to eat my in-flight Korean meal with chopsticks. It made me wonder how the West ended up with a fork while Asia went with something completely different. Right about then, the chapter talked about the evolution of the chopstick. Neat!

You can learn a lot about the development of culture from studying the development of our most basic tools.