The Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day. Impossible Engineering takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea. The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites. Impossible Engineering opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature.

Chloe Masters’ world changes in a heartbeat and all she did was touch a doorknob. James Nightshade has been on Chloe’s mind since the day she met him. Arrogant and frustrating, she thought she had put him behind her when she chose Michael Slade. When the secret she is seeking leads to questions about the death of Nightshade’s former girlfriend, she has no chose but to bring him into the investigation. A move she will come to regret. Danger awaits them around every corner as they search for answers. In the end a choice will need to be made, but is Chloe strong enough to make it?

In Engineering Vulnerability Sarah E. Vaughn examines climate adaptation against the backdrop of ongoing processes of settler colonialism and the global climate change initiatives that seek to intervene in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable. Her case study is Guyana in the aftermath of the 2005 catastrophic flooding that ravaged the country’s Atlantic coastal plain. The country’s ensuing engineering projects reveal the contingencies of climate adaptation and the capacity of flooding to shape Guyanese expectations about racial (in)equality. Analyzing the coproduction of race and vulnerability, Vaughn details why climate adaptation has implications for how we understand the past and the continued human settlement of a place. Such understandings become particularly apparent not only through experts’ and ordinary citizens’ disputes over resources but in their attention to the ethical practice of technoscience over time. Approaching climate adaptation this way, Vaughn exposes the generative openings as well as gaps in racial thinking for theorizing climate action, environmental justice, and, more broadly, future life on a warming planet. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Producing Non-Simultaneity discusses how the processes of modernisation, driven by globalisation and market forces, change the political, economic and technological conditions under which architecture is realised. The book looks beyond the rhetoric of revolutionary innovation, often put forward by architects and engineers. It shows how technological change during the last 200 years was only possible because traditional skills and older materials persisted. The volume argues that building sites have long been showcases of non-simultaneities. Shedding light on construction of the past and exploring what may impact construction in the future, this book would be a valuable addition for students, researchers and academics in architecture, architectural history and theory.

C is a favored and widely used programming language, particularly within the fields of science and engineering. C Programming for Scientists and Engineers with Applications guides readers through the fundamental, as well as the advanced concepts, of the C programming language as it applies to solving engineering and scientific problems. Ideal for readers with no prior programming experience, this text provides numerous sample problems and their solutions in the areas of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, physics, chemistry, and more. It begins with a chapter focused on the basic terminology relating to hardware, software, problem definition and solution. From there readers are quickly brought into the key elements of C and will be writing their own code upon completion of Chapter 2. Concepts are then gradually built upon using a strong, structured approach with syntax and semantics presented in an easy-to-understand sentence format. Readers will find C Programming for Scientists and Engineers with Applications to be an engaging, user-friendly introduction to this popular language.

This book sets out the principles of engineering practice, knowledge that has come to light through more than a decade of research by the author and his students studying engineers at work. Until now, this knowledge has been almost entirely unwritten, passed on invisibly from one generation of engineers to the next, what engineers refer to asexpe