Here is the essential guide toengineering, an authoritative referencebook and timeline about how technologyhas given shape to our civilization.

Engineering predates humanity; Homohabilis was knapping hand axes fromfist-sized flints more than a thousandcenturies before the dawn of modernhumans. Admittedly the developmentof technology was slow back then-but we've made up forlost time since. Striding from the Stone Age to Silicon Valleyin 100 steps, we will see how our inventors have seizedevery scientific breakthrough, new material, and betterunderstanding to improve daily life and expand the scope ofcivilization. From reshaping rivers and containing the forcesof nature to constructing artificial lifeforms and perhaps oneday even taming alien planets, engineers think big. Thesemen and women of action make our world.