In this book, James Gordon brilliantly manages to explain technically complex things in a simple way: what structures (natural and artificial) are, how they are arranged, how they work, what keeps them from collapsing, and what tears them apart, what physical laws are the cause and who discovered these laws.

Informally and wittily, but without oversimplification, the author explains how powerful forces work that help buildings not to fall apart, cable-stayed bridges not to collapse under the weight of eight-lane car traffic, and dams to hold back thousands of tons of water. And vice versa: why, due to such phenomena as tension, torsion, shear and compression, disasters still happen, airplane wings fall off and people's legs break.

Thanks to the relaxed presentation, the encyclopedic volume of facts, causes and effects is perceived as a fascinating conversation that flies by unnoticed and leaves the reader with a pleasant feeling as if he already knew all this (or, at least, guessed), and now this knowledge has finally been skillfully laid out on the shelves before him.

The book is addressed to everyone who is interested in the physical foundations and structure of the surrounding material world. The second edition corrects errors and typos made in the first.