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Design Category
Book design, 1997
Design firm
Alfred A. Knopf (New York, New York)
Collection
(1998) 50 Books/50 Covers of 1997
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The title recalls the tone of those “Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?” visions of the future from the ’20s and ’30s, so I wanted the jacket to look like a Utopian textbook from that era. Even though the twin towers pictured on the front look like something out of a Fritz Lang film, they are actually (as of this writing) the world’s tallest buildings, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, designed in 1995 by Cesar Pelli and Associates. Petroski makes you realize that to engineer and build such a complex project, or even one as relatively simple as a Ferris wheel, is something like a miracle.