THE MADE WORLD - Cornelis van Houte

Written for the general reader as a work of history and science reporting, The Made World explores how vast industrial systems and materials are anchored by single, small physical or arithmetical facts. From the queuing curves that dictate hospital and motorway bottlenecks, to the traces of carbon that turn soft iron into steel; from the chemical reactions of concrete that defy the idea of "drying," to the glass state defined by a failure to crystallize; from the rubber chains of the Amazon boom to the delayed neutrons that make a nuclear reactor controllable-this omnibus uncovers the mechanics behind the built world.

Traversing history, science, and human error-including the myths surrounding Henry Ford's assembly line, Taylor's time studies, the Hawthorne effect, and the realities of wartime operational research-Cornelis van Houte reveals how things are actually made and why our systems behave the way they do.

Dr. Cornelis van Houte is a business consultant and studied industrial engineering.