Concrete: From the Ground Up
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A stylish, eye-opening, utterly engaging, and often wry look at one of the marvels of the material world, from the ground up. From a lowly mixture of stone, sand, water, and cement have sprung sidewalks, streets, and skyscrapers, sturdy lighthouses and magnificent palaces, long bridges and massive dams. In ancient building practices, in modern engineering, and in the architecture of the future, humble concrete plays a mighty role in the creation of the human-made world. Brimming with facts and spiced with clever running narrative in the form of repartee-filled speech bubbles, Concrete is as intimate and entertaining as it is informative and visually sweeping. Curious readers of all ages—from would-be engineers to science and history buffs to retro-design lovers—will delight in this bold, one-of-a-kind guide to the (literal) bedrock of civilization, amplified by a bibliography in the back matter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Opening with a definition of the composite substance before progressing through a loose chronology of key innovations, Theule and Light whisk readers from the Göbekli Tepe to the Three Gorges Dam, the Berlin Wall, and beyond in this fascinating continent- and history-spanning introduction to concrete's wonders. Quippy speech bubbles and typeset prose tell the story, while pen, ink, and watercolor cartoon images depict famous landmarks and people, portrayed with a range of skin tones, across time. While Roman buildings play an outsize role in the book's first half, later passages delve into 18th-century civil engineer John Smeaton's waterproof concrete recipe; the development of reinforced concrete and its role in the construction of skyscrapers, bridges, and dams; and contemporary architectural applications. A breezy, accessible tone keeps the heavy-duty subject feeling light. A bibliography concludes. Ages 7–10.
