Best Engineering Books: 44 Picks Recommended by CEOs

Tracy Kidder follows Tom West’s engineering team at Data General as recent college graduates race under heavy pressure to design a new minicomputer, the Eclipse MV/8000. Scott Johnson says Kidder humanized the engineering process and drew him into high tech.

Frederick P. Brooks Jr. draws on managing IBM’s System/360 software to explain why adding programmers to a late project delays it further, along with the second-system effect, prototyping and why a design needs one coherent vision. Jeff Bezos has recommended it.

John D. Clark, who helped develop the liquid rocket fuels he describes, writes an irreverent eyewitness history of the hazardous search for propellants reliable enough to carry people into space. Elon Musk recommends it as an entertaining book on rocketry.

J.E. Gordon explains for general readers why bridges, dams and buildings stand up, setting out the founding principles of structural engineering in plain, witty prose without jargon. Elon Musk recommends it to anyone wanting a primer on structural design.

Julian M. Allwood and Jonathan M. Cullen take an engineer’s view of steel, cement, plastics and other materials, laying out evidence-based ways to keep using them while doing less environmental harm. Bill Gates was surprised by how much reuse is possible at industrial scale.

William Rosen traces the engineering and scientific advances behind the steam engine, from Newcomen and Boyle to Watt, and argues that the right to own an idea drove the invention. Bill Gates values its account of how literacy, patents and countless small inventions combined to drive the era.

Jon Gertner tells the history of Bell Labs, where a small group of scientists and engineers produced the transistor and the laser, and draws lessons on attacking hard problems and turning discoveries into products. Mark Zuckerberg read it to learn what conditions produce innovation.

Grigori Medvedev, once deputy chief engineer of Chernobyl’s first reactor unit, reconstructs the 1986 explosion minute by minute and blames reactor design, operator errors and safety violations. Craig Mazin, creator of the Chernobyl series, praises its mix of history and clear science.

Eric Berger tells how SpaceX survived three failed Falcon 1 launches, each for a different technical reason, before reaching orbit in 2008, with an iterative style of design that accepted failure as normal engineering work. Naval Ravikant points to it as the story of building the first SpaceX rocket.

Richard W. Hamming, drawing on his own discoveries such as error-correcting codes, argues that the habits of mind behind major results in science and engineering can be learned, analyzing successes and failures alike. Patrick Collison lists it on his bookshelf.

Zhenya Liu, longtime head of China’s State Grid Corporation, lays out a plan for a global clean power network using UHV AC and DC lines and smart grid technology, with its objectives, construction methods and development model. Risto Siilasmaa has recommended it.

David McCullough follows the fourteen years of building the Brooklyn Bridge, then the longest suspension bridge in the world, through designer John A. Roebling, his son Washington, the stricken chief engineer, and Emily Warren Roebling. Michael Lopp jokes that it shows bridge building while the technology was still in beta.

Ben Rapien distills 45 years with press brake tooling into a guide to forming sheet-metal parts: choosing tooling, sizing up machines, calculating blanks and working out bend sequences. Carl Bass, chief executive of Autodesk, has it on his reading list.

The International Code Council sets the rules for building, plumbing, mechanical, fuel gas and electrical work in houses and townhouses, and this edition updates seismic maps and fire separation rules. Alan Pierce values it for an overall grasp of modern Western building styles and materials.

Steve Chappell’s technical manual centers on pegged mortise and tenon joinery for traditional timber frames, with engineering specifications revised from new test results on pegged joints. Alan Pierce values the old-world joinery methods it teaches, used in houses that lasted for centuries.

Steve McConnell’s handbook treats software construction, from naming variables and writing routines to debugging, testing and integration, as the center of development and a lever on programmer productivity. Santiago Basulto names it a fundamental starting point.

Rob Thallon, an architect and teacher, explains wood frame construction in more than 500 drawings, from footings and joist systems to wall bracing, roofs, insulation and stairs, with updated code information. Alan Pierce recommends it to anyone getting into construction or engineering.

Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson tells how he directed design work on the P-38 and the Constellation, then the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes, while running the company’s Skunk Works. David Senra has it on his Founders Podcast reading list.

G. Pascal Zachary tells how a hand-picked team of software engineers built Windows NT under heavy pressure, through bugs, personal conflicts and hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Scott Johnson recommends it among his case studies of product development.

David McCullough covers nearly half a century of work on the Panama Canal, from the failed French attempt to the American finish, covering finance, diplomacy and the conquest of yellow fever. Holger Arians reads it as a lesson in carrying a vast project from drawings to completion, mistakes included.

Taiichi Ohno, credited with inventing the Toyota Production System, explains the just-in-time methods and waste reduction behind lean manufacturing through Toyota’s own attempts at it. Grey Baker prizes it for lessons learned in the plant, not consultant jargon.

Mainly a biography, Ashlee Vance’s account follows Musk from a rough South African childhood through his first internet companies to Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity, asking whether America can still hold its own as a nation of inventors. Gilles Bernhard says it showed him what a modern inventor looks like.

Andy Weir’s novel strands astronaut Mark Watney, a botanist and engineer, alone on Mars after his crew leaves him for dead, with supplies that will run out long before rescue, so he must engineer his own survival. James Clear recommends it to anyone who likes space or science.

Mainly a design book, Don Norman’s study argues that hard-to-use doors and switches are design failures, and sets out user-centered principles such as affordances, mapping, constraints and designing for error. Julia Enthoven credits it with shaping her product sense.

Walter Isaacson traces how computers and the internet came to be through the inventors and engineers from Ada Lovelace to the pioneers of the microchip and the web, showing how collaboration turned ideas into working technology. Santiago Basulto says it had a deep impact on him.

Tom Wolfe portrays the postwar test pilots who flew experimental rocket planes and the Mercury astronauts, dwelling more on their code of courage than on the machines. Anoop Anthony calls it very readable on test pilots and astronauts.

Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman’s biography covers the mathematician and engineer whose thesis applied Boolean algebra to electrical circuits and whose Bell Labs paper founded information theory, along with his juggling machines and wearable computer. David Senra has it on his podcast list.

Materials scientist Mark Miodownik gives each chapter to one material, from steel, glass and concrete to carbon fiber, graphene and aerogels, mixing its science with its history. Bill Gates admires how well Miodownik conveys his enthusiasm for the subject, and Patrick Collison lists it.

Economist Marc Levinson writes mainly about economics and trade, telling how the standardized shipping container, after years of bargaining over standards and labor, cut shipping costs and let factories move far from customers. Bill Gates says Levinson makes a good case that it reshaped the global economy.

Steven Johnson traces six innovations behind modern life, from refrigeration and clocks to lenses and clean water, through the hobbyists, amateurs and entrepreneurs who built them and their unplanned consequences. Bill Gross says the history reads almost like a mystery story.

Andrew Chaikin tells the Apollo program through the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon and the people who supported them on Earth, from the Apollo 1 fire to Apollo 17. Morgan Housel calls the moon landings the hardest and riskiest feat ever attempted.

Vaclav Smil follows energy through human history, from hunter gatherers and donkey-powered mills to combustion engines, nuclear reactors and a civilization built on fossil fuels. Bill Gates admits it is hard going but says readers finish it knowing far more about how new energy sources reshape societies.

Vaclav Smil surveys the materials the modern world runs on, from wood and stone to metals, plastics and silicon, explaining how each is extracted, produced and used and what that costs in energy. Bill Gates credits its skeptical, data-driven case on making things with less material.

Gretchen Bakke, a cultural anthropologist, studies the US power grid, an engineering triumph of its century that has aged poorly and now strains under wind and solar power, as a product of history and culture. Bill Gates files it among books about mundane things that prove fascinating.

Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon tell how Faraday’s experiments and Maxwell’s mathematics revealed the electromagnetic field, mixing biography with clear physics and connecting their field theory to the generation of electric power that followed. Charlie Munger calls it the best book of its kind he has read.

Michael A. Hiltzik tells how the young inventors and engineers at Xerox PARC created laser printing, the graphical user interface and an early personal computer, and why Xerox failed to exploit them. Patrick Collison lists it on his bookshelf.

Leslie Berlin’s biography of the co-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel also shows how money, politics and technology mixed in Silicon Valley. Patrick Collison lists it on his bookshelf.

Christian Davenport follows the billionaires reviving American spaceflight, chiefly the founders of SpaceX and Blue Origin, as they bring startup methods to the job of making launches cheaper. Walter Isaacson praises its reporting and its access to the main players.

Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, and David Grinspoon recount the decades of cancellations, political fights and ingenuity it took to design, build and fly a probe past Pluto. Brad Feld singles it out from his vacation reading list.

Douglas Brinkley’s history of the race to the moon covers the politics, culture and science behind NASA and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, with figures such as rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Morgan Housel ranks it first among the books he knows on the 1960s race to the moon.

A. J. Baime tells how Ford’s heir, with Iacocca and the racer turned engineer Shelby, set out to build a car that could beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. David Senra has it on his Founders Podcast reading list.

Michael Lopp’s stories from managing software engineers at Apple, Netscape, Borland and Symantec cover hiring, one-on-ones, slackers and seeing hard projects through, mainly about management rather than engineering itself. Dave Child recommends it to developers moving into management.

Oliver Morton examines geoengineering, deliberate intervention in the climate system, from a stratospheric veil against the sun to cloud-seeding ships, covering its history, politics and science. A CEO Library reader named it among the best books of their year.

Journalist Vince Beiser reports on sand, the raw material of concrete, roads, glass and silicon chips, following the miners, traders and builders who depend on it and the costs of a supply that is running out. Nicholas Thompson says it has something new on every page.