One Good Turn: a Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski

One Good Turn: a Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski

The Best Tool of the Millennium
The seeds of Rybczynski's elegant and illuminating new book were sown by The New York Times, whose editors asked him to write an essay identifying the best tool of the millennium. The award-winning author of Home, A Clearing in the Distance, and Now I Sit Me Down, Rybczynski once built a house using only hand tools. His intimate knowledge of the toolbox -- both its contents and its history -- serves him beautifully on his quest.

One Good Turn is a story starring Archimedes, who invented the water screw and introduced the helix, and Leonardo, who sketched a machine for carving wood screws. It is a story of mechanical discovery and genius that takes readers from ancient Greece to car design in the age of American industry. Rybczynski writes an ode to the screw, without which there would be no telescope, no microscope -- in short, no enlightenment science. One of our finest cultural and architectural historians, Rybczynski renders a graceful, original, and engaging portrait of the tool that changed the course of civilization.

Rybczynski, Witold: - Witold Rybczynski has written about architecture and urbanism for The New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Home and the award-winning A Clearing in the Distance, as well as The Biography of a Building, The Mysteries of the Mall, and Now I Sit Me Down. The recipient of the National Building Museum's 2007 Vincent Scully Prize, he lives with his wife in Philadelphia, where he is emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780684867304
ISBN 10	0684867303
Title	One Good Turn: a Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
Author	Witold Rybczynski
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Year published	2001-09-11
Number of pages	173
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.