I mixed things up a bit, and instead of reading a book on biblical studies, I chose a subject from the applied sciences.  The book I decided to read (because I already bought it) was entitled Bridges: The Science and Art of the World’s Most Inspiring Structures, and David Blockley wrote it. I wasn’t aware when I bought the book. Still, Blockley also wrote Structural Engineering: A Very Short Introduction, a volume in the Very Short Introductions collection by Oxford University Press that I enjoy reading and collecting. Bridges was a worthy book to read, and it has given me more of an awareness of the commonness of bridges.

As a reader who is not trained as an engineer and has never taken a formal physics class, I know the subject gets extremely technical and detailed. Understandably, I’m not going to place a bid on the design and construction of a bridge. Bridge types get divided into technical elements, with each aspect not being oversimplified to a level that is hard to appreciate. However, he points out that so much of what we see and do depends on this critical infrastructure. Using the idea of book creation, bridge parts are broken down into “stories”. Starting at a rudimentary level of bridges, he builds on the concepts. One that will have fewer technical aspects and break down into it will have fewer fields of movement. He mentions that the acronym BATS is a good piece of summary information that can be applied to other examinations of bridges just by looking at them through life.