Don't Throw This Away! The Civil Engineering Life

Professor, editor and lifelong engineering enthusiast Brenner bucks staid engineering stereotypes to deliver a brief, playful look at the world through the eyes of a civil engineer, via a collection of 46 vignettes remarkable for their subtlety, humor and inspiration. Essays are short but eloquent, many packing the punch and range of any good creative nonfiction and tackling Brenner's awe, at age four, of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge; the tender question he presents his father, “What do you think of my bridge, Dad?” at two very different moments in his life; a vengeful parakeet and the “extremes of hamster behavior”; and specific sites of engineering interest, such as Nashville's Opryland Hotel, home of “some terrific public spaces” but “also emblematic of much of what is wrong with American infrastructure design today.” He deals with engineering in pop culture (“Vegetarian Nerds Watching the Super Bowl”), wedding parties (“The Baby Sitter-In-Law”) and the pack rat habits of his people (in his title essays, “Don't Throw This Away,” I–IV). He even finds room for outright humor pieces, like “A Comparison of Dilbert and Wally,” in which he considers two characters from the comic strip Dilbert . Despite the technical pedigree, Brenner's honest, assured voice, brainiac populism and bite-size essays make this a quirky, addictive winner that should bring out the “inner civil engineer” in a wide cross-section of readers. (Jan.)