Followup to: Unteachable Excellence
As previously observed, extraordinary successes tend to be considered extraordinary precisely because it is hard to teach (relative to the then-current level of understanding and systematization). On the other hand, famous failures are much more likely to contain lessons on what to avoid next time.
Books about epic screwups have constituted some of my more enlightening reading. Do you have any such books to recommend?
Please break up multiple recommendations into multiple comments, one book per comment, so they can be voted on and discussed separately. And please say at least a little about the book's subject and what sort of lesson you learned from it.
A classic book on failures is Levy & Salvadori's Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail (ca 1992).
They review a variety of bridges, buildings, dams and other objects with exciting failure modes. Remarkably, they manage to be respectful of the regrettable loss of life while also being kind of funny. For example, the classic film of the failure of the Tacoma Narrows bridge shown to physics undergrads is hilarious when you watch Professor Whatsisname walk down the nodal line; it's somewhat less funny when you realize the degree of danger to his life.
An architect friend once claimed to me that under Hammurabic law, if a building fell down and killed somebody, the architect was killed too -- and that this led to modern architecture firms being partnerships instead of corporations, with personal liability for the architect when he puts his seal on plans. Another friend, whose credibility I know less about, asserted that in Roman times when building an arch the engineer was required to stand underneath it as the construction scaffolding and trusses were removed.
I can't verify the stories, and don't approve of the brutality involved in any case. But a high degree of personal involvement with the consequences of failure does perhaps inspire some degree of meticulousness, and perhaps solicitation of peer review. ("Hey, Fred! I gotta stand under this bridge. Does it look right to you?")
That's true. From the Code: