Ethical and Otherwise

When engineering or technology shows up in headlines, it's usually because something goes wrong.  Since 2006, Karl Stephan has been writing a weekly blog on newsworthy topics in engineering and technology with an ethical angle.  This book collects over 40 of his most popular blogs, and covers disasters of many kinds (both modern and historic), blunders and lawbreaking by corporations and individuals, and thoughts on the engineering profession.  Well-known cases described in the book include the sinking of the Titanic, fertilizer explosions at Texas City (1947) and West (2013), as well as air crashes, railroad wrecks, and building and construction failures.  Each chapter is self-contained with up-to-date references.  This book is an excellent reference source for engineering and professional ethics cases, as well as an entertaining read.  Karl Stephan is a professor in the Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, and has published numerous papers in the areas of microwave engineering, atmospheric and plasma physics, the history of technology, and engineering ethics.  He is also the author of Analog and Mixed-Signal Electronics (2015), published by Wiley.