Another unexpected treat. I picked this up in the library on the assumption that it was a Henry Petroski type book about the history of everyday objects or suchlike; the publishers certainly have tried hard to fool you into believing that with the book's subtitle, cover photo and blurb. But in fact it's rather
different and more interesting.

It's essentially a meditation on the role of design in the construction of modern artifacts, covering things like how design makes them better (or worse), how design (and the existence of products in general) is constrained by historical circumstance and contingencies, and how design can be harnessed to improve the world (for example, while people are always going to want to show status, you can channel that into status being represented by smaller, more eco-friendly, more carefully crafted objects rather than the common equating of higher status with larger objects).

What makes it especially pleasant is that, while not dry, it's written as a scientific work, not a polemic. He describes the way the world is, but doesn't then rant about how politics, economics or whatever has caused it to be this way, and he gives frequent examples to show just how simple-minded the usual ideological viewpoints are compared with reality. ( )