One Good Turn : A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw

One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw

The seeds of Rybczynski's elegant and illuminating new book were sown by The New York Times, whose editors asked him to write an essay identifying "the best tool of the millennium." An award-winning author who once built a house using only hand tools, Rybczynski has intimate knowledge of the toolbox -- both its contents and its history -- which serves him beautifully on his quest.One Good Turn is a story starring Archimedes, who invented the water screw and introduced the helix, and Leonardo, who sketched a machine for carving wood screws. It is a story of mechanical discovery and genius that takes readers from ancient Greece to car design in the age of American industry. Rybczynski writes an ode to the screw, without which there would be no telescope, no microscope -- in short, no enlightenment science.

Arts & Photography

Witold Rybczynski

Architecture

Scribner, 2000

City Life (Paperback, 1996)

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

Simon&Schuster

The Most Beautiful House in the World

The author provides an eloquent examination of the links between being and building, as he tells the story of the designing and building of his own house. 4 cassettes.

Most Beautiful House in the World

Drawing

Bt Bound

Few architects have been as influential as Andrea Palladio, whose ideas are embodied in stately buildings across Europe and America. In this fusion of travelogue, architectural guide and historical biography, the acclaimed architectural commentator Witold Rybczynski journeys along the Brenta River in northern Italy to visit Palladios surviving villas, and discovers how a rustic stonemason became the most sophisticated architect of the Renaissance.

The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio

Scribner

Home: A Short History of an Idea

History & Criticism

Viking Penguin, Inc.

[Read by Wanda McCaddon]   Explore the history and the nature of the time we consider ''our own''.  ''We work,'' Aristotle wrote, ''in order to have leisure.'' Today, this is still true. But is the leisure that Aristotle spoke of--the freedom to do nothing--the same as the leisure we look forward to each weekend?   There have always been breaks from the routine of work--taboo days, market days, public festivals, holy days--we couldn't survive without them. In Waiting for the Weekend, Witold Rybczynski unfolds the history and evolution of leisure time in Western civilization, from Aristotle, through the Middle Ages, to the present. Along the way, he explores how the psychological needs that leisure time seeks to fulfill have changed as the nature of work has changed.

Waiting for the Weekend (Library Edition)

Blackstone Audio,Inc.

Paper Heroes: Review of Appropriate Technology

Prism Press

Sm Quarto, , PP.480, Frederick Law Olmsted And America In The 19th Century

A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Charles Scribners' Sons

Waiting for the Weekend (Chinese Edition)

Zhejiang University Press

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Books by Witold Rybczynski