Engineering needs an image boost — one that is delivered by Henry Petroski in The Essential Engineer (Knopf, 2010). Explaining how the discipline can solve the planet's problems, he discusses how engineers turn the abstract ideas of scientists into reality, from implementing biofuels and electric cars to producing nuclear power and mitigating climate change. Today's challenges might seem daunting, but Petroski points out that it was ever thus: who would have thought 150 years ago that we would land on the Moon?

Technology saved the lives of the passengers and crew of the US Airways plane that made an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River a year ago. In Fly by Wire (Penguin, 2010), William Langewiesche takes a look behind the scenes of aviation research, asking how much of the 'miracle on the Hudson' was a result of the experience of celebrated pilot Chelsey Sullenberger, and how much came from the foresight of engineers. Looking into airliner design, he explains how jet engines are built to withstand bird strikes and how flight computers complement the skills of pilots.

Theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg leaves behind high-energy physics to take a more sedate form of mental travel in his latest collection of essays, Lake Views (Harvard University Press, 2010). Inspired by the scenery of Lake Austin, Texas, over which he gazes from his desk, the Nobel laureate offers pragmatic musings on diverse topics from cosmology and politics to war and religion. Always rational, often sensitive and witty, he assesses topics such as missile defence and the future of science and its quest to attain a theory of everything.