| CONCRETE PLANET The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World's Most Common Man-Made Material Robert Courland Dennis Smith (Fwd.) Amherst: Prometheus Books, November 2011 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-61614-481-4 | ||||
| ISBN 1-61614-481-5 | 396pp. | HC/BWI | $? | |
| Page 29: | "...heat is generated— up to 150°C (over 300°F)—and calcium hydroxide is formed." |
| Degree symbol: in the book, this looks wrong, placed too low somehow. |
| Page 51: | "In 2010, one lightning bolt killed 32 people in two separate villages during a single storm in Pakistan." |
| There's a citation for this, but I still wonder how it was known to be one bolt. |
| Page 54: | "Excavations of more recent sites in the area also demonstrate that knowledge of these respective crafts were not lost to humanity through social upheavals or natural disasters." |
| Number error: S/B "was not lost". |
| Page 55: | "...made of wedge groupings called cuneiform (Latin for 'wedge-shaped') to represent the different sounds of human speech." |
| Is this truly Latin? |
| Page 62: | "Neither Michel W. Barsoum [...] nor chemical engineer Joseph Davidovits [...] come across as fringe—or unhinged—theorists." |
| Number error: S/B "comes across". |
| Page 66: | "...and compared them to Davidovits's Geopolymer concrete." |
| Printing error: unwanted line break. |
| Page 67: | "The potential energy savings and pollution-curbing attributes of Davidovits's Geopolymer concrete is more vital to the public interest than his attempt to uphold a fascinating but deeply flawed theory on how the pyramids were constructed." |
| Number error: S/B "are more vital". |
| Page 75: | "...and most provinces would eventually see at least one of its native sons become emperor." |
| Number error: S/B "at least one of their native sons". |
| Page 75: | "Aside from the cistern in Rhodes mentioned previously, no other structure incorporating hydraulic concrete or mortar from the archaic or classical period has yet been discovered from the Greek mainland or islands." |
| Redundant: S/B "no structure". |
| Page 78: | "A surviving portrait bust of Cato exemplifies Roman mastery of subtle character delineation, for the sculpture shows a sour-faced, unrepentant reactionary. Today he would probably be a popular talk show host." |
| Zing! |
| Page 80: | "Cato calculates that each linear foot of a five-foot wall should require one modius (ca two dry gallons) of lime and four modii (ca. eight dry gallons) of sand." |
| Contradiction: Refer to page 79, where the author writes "He instructs the reader to mix two parts of sand with one part of lime." And on page 83 is the statement "(Later Romans would used better-quality sand, and so they could increase the measure to three or four parts sand to one of lime.)" |
| Page 102: | "The form was soon being constructed on land, with the planks making up the walls and floors incorporating the same mortis and tendon joints used by ancient ships to ensure a watertight fit." |
| Spelling: S/B "tenon". |
| Page 109: | "Mentioned by Vitruvius as being a component of waterproof stucco, it did not take the Romans long to recognize that the red powder had properties similar to pozzolana." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "It did not take the Romans long to recognize that the red powder, mentioned by Vitruvius as being a component of waterproof stucco," |
| Page 138: | "Besides sacrificing humans to their gods in great public ceremonies, the individual could also beseech divine assistance by offering his or her own blood." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "Humans were sacrificed to their gods in great public ceremonies, but the individual" |
| Page 145: | "In the second half of eighteenth century, one British engineer stood in preeminence over all others: John Smeaton." |
| Missing word: S/B "the second half of the eighteenth century". |
| Page 149: | "A story published after Smeaton's death serves as perhaps the engineer's best epithet." |
| Word choice: S/B "epitaph". |
| Page 193: | Quoting a circular from William Aspdin: "The manufacturer of this cement has for many years been carried on by Mr. Aspdin at Wakefield..." |
| Spelling: S/B "manufacture". |
| Page 221: | "Although the silver was in Nevada, the riches flowed into San Francisco where most of the mining magnets, like James Flood, John McKay, James Fair, and George Hearst (father of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst) lived and invested most of their profits." |
| Word choice: S/B "magnates". |
| Page 286: | "Then there were the hundred little details that always need to be addressed when the master blueprint is modified: the position of the elevator, the courses of the plumping and electrical conduits, and so on." |
| Spelling: S/B "plumbing". |
| Page 298: | "By this time, the chief engineering hurtle, the construction of the shells, was nearing completion." |
| Spelling: S/B "hurdle". An error due to transcribing dictation? Quite a few of the spelling or word-choice errors may be such. |
| Page 306: | "Further research performed by other individuals have filled in missing details and are in general accordance with Hansen's account of what happened in 1906." |
| Number: S/B "has" and "is". |
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