Will I love The Pencil?

I opened up this book as a skeptic–how interesting could a history of this ubiquitous writing tool be? However, I quickly ate my words (a fitting metaphor for such a book) after diving into Henry Petroski’s meticulously researched and easy to read tale of how a common thing becomes common in the first place.

While the book is a study in engineering, it’s also a story of people who doodle, think, design, and imagine. Petroski taught me that much as we live in a digital age, we’re indebted to the simple and impressively designed artifacts that stick around century after… show more.