Books like The Lonely Sky — picked by fans

This is not an engineering book per se, but one written by an engineer/fighter pilot in WW2. His aircraft was a Hawker Tempest, one of the last and fastest piston-engined fighters. The following quote describes his final flight before demobilization and shows his deep love for the engineering marvel that he flew:

“And in that narrow cockpit I wept, as I shall never weep again, when I felt the concrete brush against his wheels and, with I great sweep of the wrist, dropped him on the ground like a cut flower. 

As always, I carefully cleared the engine, turned off all the switches one by one, removed the straps, the wires and the tubes which tied me to him, like a child to his mother. And when my waiting pilots and my mechanics saw my downcast eyes and my shaking shoulders, they understood and returned to the Dispersal in… show more.

As the title suggests, an engineer’s biography. But Nevil Shute was more than an engineer. He was an entrepreneur, starting his own aircraft manufacturing company, and a famous novelist, still in print today. But Slide Rule remains for me his masterwork, describing as it does the design and building of airships in the 1930s. 

It is a fascinating book about a technology that no longer exists. The design challenge was in creating a vehicle that, although made of metal, had to float in the air. This was achieved by making it very big, displacing the air inside it with a lighter-than-air gas, so that it could lift those pieces which had to be made of metal as well as a payload of persons or freight.

The design challenges were awesome. The metal parts, particularly the huge metal rings that formed the outline of the ship, had to be optimised for… show more.

Here is a genuine Engineering Textbook. Thermodynamics was my favourite subject as an undergraduate and the only subject in which I excelled, coming first in class in my final year in Thermo, as we students called it. Thermodynamics deals with Heat as a form of energy and its uses in the creation of engines, turbines, rockets, and the like. Without it and its twin technology, electricity, the modern world could not exist. Before the Industrial Revolution, the only power sources were wind, water, animals, and men (as slaves). Then came the quantum leap of Steam and the world has never been the same.

This was the book that set me on the path to becoming a Reliability Engineering specialist. (Reliability Engineering being a subset of Mechanical Engineering). This book was my first exposure to reliability engineering lore, covering subjects such as the Weibull Distribution and the probabilistic approach to engineering reliability. To design and manufacture an engineering system is one thing – how to make it reliable enough to last for its projected lifetime is another. More emphasis is now being placed on these aspects of the engineering life cycle – the operation, maintenance, and divestment phases. This approach has sometimes delivered systems an order of magnitude more reliable than their 20th Century forebears.

Shelman is one of the Godfathers of indie zompoc. He was an early adaptor to the Amazon self-publishing model and his series, Dead Hunger, was one of the first I read. It starts at the beginning of the outbreak and covers the ups and downs over decades in the 10-book series. Great characters, compelling science, and heartfelt situations kept me reading. The villains were unique, the heroes were likable and funny and the story moves along quickly. There is lots of action and some over-the-top situations as the band of survivors try to stay alive and rebuild a life for themselves. Shelman narrates his own books (and many others) and is one of the absolute best voice actors I’ve listened to.

Max Barry’s satirical science-fiction novel, Machine Man, is a dark and funny mediation on contemporary society’s compulsive over-reliance on technology. The narrator, Charles Neumann, is a mechanical engineer who, while obsessively searching for his phone, loses his leg in an industrial accident. After building himself a new machine leg, Charles purposely loses his other leg, so he can replace it with another machine leg. After seeing how great his new legs work, Charles wonders if maybe he should replace more of his body parts with machine parts, begging the question: Where does humanity end and technology begin?

Crossfield wrote one of the first books about what it means to be a test pilot of a powerful rocket plane, and I consider it the best. This book is an autobiography that delves into the nature of the personality of someone who can climb into the cockpit of an experimental aircraft, light off the engines, and climb high into the desert sky at multiples of the speed of sound. It also is the book that began my deeply personal 30-year journey to write my own book on the North American X-15. Scotty was one of the first pilots I spoke to in order to get insights into how these people think and react. I know you’ll enjoy meeting him through his book as much as I did sitting with him in person.

I’ve never encountered anything else like this aviation-oriented apocalypse. The author skillfully blends supersonic air combat and cutthroat conquest in a shattered world. This is the most high-octane adventure concept I’ve read in the last 30 years. It grabbed me by the throat and never let go. For many reasons, I still feel influenced by it today.

I absolutely love the layout of this book–the title, the photos, and the fonts. This irresistible chapter heading made me want to know more: “Training: Thrilled to Death with Everything.” At the start of the book, I knew nothing about World War II Red Cross volunteers and next to nothing about the war in Africa. LeOna’s letters are so exuberant with descriptions so vivid you feel like you are walking in her footsteps. I love the photos with her smiling face. I finished this book with a deep respect for the dedicated women who worked so hard to provide soldiers with comfort and a connection to home.

A similar concept to Man in the High Castle, The UNtied Kingdom explores an alternate reality in which the Axis won World War II. The book begins in modern-day England where down-on-her-luck and former pop star, Eve, suffers a hang-gliding accident while filming a has-been “where are they now” reality TV show. She falls through a wormhole into the WWII alternate reality and is saved by Major Harker, only to be arrested as a potential Axis spy. When Harker embarks on a mission to infiltrate enemy lines, he drags Eve along on his mission for her Axis intelligence, and so begins their exciting, adventure-filled romance. Will he ever believe that she came from a different reality? Will she be able to help right the wrongs in his? Is this world the one she belongs in—with him? The questions that Johnson (no relation!) explores are intriguing, heart-wrenching, and kept me riveted… show more.