| Preface | vii |
| Being Human | 1 |
| Falling Down is Part of Growing Up | 11 |
| Lessons from Play; Lessons from Life | 21 |
| Appendix: "The Deacon's Masterpiece" by Oliver Wendell Holmes | 35 |
| Engineering As Hypothesis | 40 |
| Success is Foreseeing Failure | 53 |
| Design is Getting from Here to There | 64 |
| Design As Revision | 75 |
| Accidents Waiting To Happen | 85 |
| Safety in Numbers | 98 |
| When Cracks Become Breakthroughs | 107 |
| Of Bus Frames And Knife Blades | 122 |
| Interlude: The Success Story of the Crystal Palace | 136 |
| The Ups and Downs of Bridges | 158 |
| Forensic Engineering And Engineering Fiction | 172 |
| From Slide Rule To Computer: Forgetting How It Used To Be Done | 189 |
| Connoisseurs of Chaos | 204 |
| The Limits of Design | 216 |
| Afterword | 229 |
| Bibliography | 233 |
| Index | 245 |
| List of Illustrations: | |
| An eight-page section of illustrations follows page 106. | |
| I. Cartoons illustrating public concern over engineering failures | |
| II. Models of the ubiquitous cantilever beam | |
| III. The Brooklyn Bridge: anticipating failure by the engineer and by the layman | |
| IV. The Crystal Palace: testing the galleries and finding them sound | |
| V. The Crystal Palace and two of its modern imitators | |
| VI. Suspension bridges: the Tacoma Narrows and after | |
| VII. The Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways collapse | |
| VIII. The Mianus River Bridge collapse and its aftermath |