Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down, also by J.E. Gordon, is the macroscopic plain-English version. Highly recommend it. I once described it as "Civil

Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down, also by J.E. Gordon, is the macroscopic plain-English version. Highly recommend it. I once described it as "Civil Engineering for Dummies", and the chemical engineer across the table from me said "Isn't that a redundant statement?" (she's married to a civil engineer, so perhaps that colored her experience.)