Loving and loathing

Why are engineers so unloved? Samuel Florman, an American civil engineer, has come up with some answers in The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (Souvenir Press, £10.99, ISBN 0 285 63287 6). The engineer, he says, is seen as the archetypal technologist in an era when “technology’ is a word of evil implication, identified with weaponry; greed and environmental degradation. Nothing new there. But Florman’s response, first published in 1976 and now re-issued, goes on to explore the challenging compromises, and compromising challenges, that confront the profession every day. Not bad thinking – for an engineer.