Inviting Disaster
James R. Chiles · first published 2001 · ISBN 9780066620824
Chiles narrates more than fifty historical catastrophes, from the 1937 Texas school gas explosion that killed almost three hundred people to the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Each story traces how small decisions and assumptions cascaded into tragedy. The narratives show engineering decisions that seemed reasonable at the time but led to unprecedented failure.
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While other books teach principles abstractly, Chiles gives you stories that stick. Reading how a specific choice made by a specific engineer led to specific people dying is far more memorable than a theorem. These narratives shape how you think about your own decisions.