The Wonder Book of Engineering Wonders

The Wonder Book of Engineering Wonders

Edited by Harry Golding, Second Edition, Revised, Ward, Lock & Co., London and Melbourne. Undated; the 1930s, by the look of it.

"Man is a tool-making animal," says the title page, quoting Dr Johnson, and the book spends three hundred illustrations and twelve colour plates proving it. Bridges, dams, tunnels, docks, power stations, cranes: this is the age of steel and rivets described for young readers who were expected, before long, to go and build some of it themselves.

The cover is the best thing about it. A giant cantilever crane swings a bridge span out over a crowded river while tugs fuss about underneath, painted with the confidence of a decade that believed engineering was heroic. It still is, of course; it has just stopped saying so.

Harry Golding's trick, across the whole Wonder Book series, was never to talk down. The explanations here are real explanations, with diagrams, and a patient child could come away understanding how a lock gate holds back a harbour.

This copy has worked for its living. The cloth spine is worn through at the head and tail, the corners are bumped, and the cover is scratched and creased in the way of a book that was carried about. The pages are sound and the plates are bright. As with all genuine antiquarian books, previous owners may have left annotations or marks, and we see these as part of the story rather than against it.

For engineers, and for people who stop to watch cranes.

Please note:

Each antiquarian book in the Ada & Vera Cabinet of Curiosities is unique. Condition will vary, and no two copies tell quite the same story.

Delivery

Books travel further than cheese. Delivered to your London hotel or any UK address (£9, free over £100), or sent tracked to the United States (£18, five to ten days). Printed books enter the US duty-free; the parcel carries a customs declaration and one copy is all there is.

Fifty pence from this book goes to the cats of London. Buttons insisted.