The Toothpick: Technology and Culture
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.96 (581 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 030727943X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 464 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-10-30 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A Huge Reference Source for a Tiny Tool "Surely I cannot have read a A Huge Reference Source for a Tiny Tool Rob Hardy "Surely I cannot have read a 400 page book about the toothpick!" was my feeling when I set down Henry Petroski's _The Toothpick: Technology and Culture_ (Knopf). But the pages slipped by, each with its details about "History's Splendid Splinter". Actually, that is the title of a fictitious journal of supposedly scholarly essays on all aspects of the toothpick, and it is funny to think of scholarship expended on such a teensy tool. . 00 page book about the toothpick!" was my feeling when I set down Henry Petroski's _The Toothpick: Technology and Culture_ (Knopf). But the pages slipped by, each with its details about "History's Splendid Splinter". Actually, that is the title of a fictitious journal of supposedly scholarly essays on all aspects of the toothpick, and it is funny to think of scholarship expended on such a teensy tool. . The pickin is fine . Gary M. Olson I am a long-time Petroski fan, owning all of his books and having read with great joy almost all of them. He has a knack for taking an ordinary, everyday object (pencil, paper clip, bookshelf, .) and finding the stories that make for a fascinating socio-technical history. This book is no exception. He even expresses his own surprise, in that his original plan was to write a chapter on the toothpick for another book, but then discov. "The story of the toothpick industry is the story of American industry" according to ROROTOKO. "The Toothpick" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Petroski's book interview ran here as a cover feature on January 2, 2009.
With his usual flair for combining technical expertise and cultural acumen, Petroski (The Pencil) presents nearly every toothpick in the historical record. (Oct. Although some readers may feel he pushes the limits of the history of ordinary objects genre, there's still enough intriguing detail, even in the minute evolutions of toothpick etiquette, to keep readers engaged. Petroski occasionally offers a first-person perspective, describing the unpleasant feel of a bamboo pick or confessi
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. . The author of a dozen previous books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina
Here, with an engineer's eye for detail and a poet's flair for language, Henry Petroski takes us on an incredible tour of this most interesting invention. A celebration culture and technology, as seen through the history of the humble yet ubiquitous toothpick, from the best-selling author of The Pencil.From ancient Rome, where emperor Nero made his entrance into a banquet hall with a silver toothpick in his mouth, to nineteenth-century Boston, where Charles Forster, the father of the American wooden toothpick industry, ensured toothpicks appeared in every restaurant, the toothpick has been an omnipresent, yet often overlooked part of our daily lives. Along the way, he peers inside today's surprisingly secretive toothpick-manufacturing industry, and explores a treasure trove of the toothpick's unintended uses and perils, from sandwiches to martinis and beyond.