{"product_id":"a-shortage-of-engineers-a-novel-9780312275549","title":"A Shortage of Engineers: A Novel","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA Shortage of Engineers: A Novel\u003c\/strong\u003e by Grossbach, Robert. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780312275549.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Zack Zaremba graduates form engineering school, he wants little more from his career than to do useful, interesting work. It is not long, however, before life becomes more complicated: Hes assigned to an Air Force contract with impossibly difficult specs, $100,000-a-day late penalties, bullying managers, disgruntled coworkers, and parts that must be ordered before theres a design. When he fall fervently, passionately in love with Lilah Li, a beautiful Asian-American programmer with a whistle-blowers agenda, he realizes just how irrelevant his engineering education was in preparing him for moral choices.\n\nZacks coworkers include Warren Kushner, whos never had a date and draws up flowcharts of even casual phone conversations with women; Shopper Jim, engineer-for-hire, whose engineering survival rules include, \"Always keep enough cardboard boxes under your desk to carry out all your stuff\"; the Frenchman, who wears his clothes backward as a sign of bureaucratic defiance; and the silky smooth Wonderboy, whose corner-cutting extends from finessing the Air Force to cheating on the office contest in tiny writing.\n\nZack soon discovers himself covering for the incompetence and corruption of others. Middle management-the dyspeptic A Boy named Hsu, the heavily pustuled Medieval Man, sick-leave king Whispering Bill, in-business-for-himself Marv-only makes things worse. As it gradually becomes clear that the hardware cant meet the promised specs, Zack is seized in a crosscurrent of loyalties when he must decide whether to lie at a Critical Design Review. His only anchors are Lilah, her son, and the six-year-olds he volunteers to coach in soccer, a sport hes never played. As his team loses game after game, Zack struggles with the mysterious, painful, age-old task of engineering: making things work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"St. Martin's Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44989371088949,"sku":"ByrdShop_0312275544","price":61.04,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780312275549_bdb2ba02-a4a5-45b1-8f54-4bbaca97d009.jpg?v=1778639138","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/a-shortage-of-engineers-a-novel-9780312275549","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}