On J.E. Gordon’s Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down

There’s something delightful about a book that takes a subject as unsexy as “why stuff doesn’t fall over” and manages to make it both fascinating and, dare I say, funny. J.E. Gordon’s Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down is that rare sort of book—one that sneaks into your brain disguised as entertainment but leaves you a bit smarter, slightly smugger, and much more suspicious of bridges.

Gordon, you see, has done something almost treasonous for an engineer: he’s made engineering enjoyable. He approaches the world of beams and arches, levers and load-bearing walls, with the sort of infectious enthusiasm usually reserved for people who collect vintage wine or rare diseases. And thank goodness for that, because otherwise, it would just be 300 pages of equations and dry diagrams, leaving most of us to quietly slump over like a poorly designed suspension bridge.

Instead, Gordon takes you by the hand—or perhaps more accurately, he grabs you by the lapels—and walks you through the hidden logic of the physical world. Why do medieval cathedrals stay up despite their ridiculous height? Why do aeroplane wings bend but not snap? Why, he asks with something close to glee, do things sometimes fall down spectacularly? And why does human stupidity remain undefeated in the battle against gravity and common sense?

He doesn’t lecture, though. No, Gordon isn’t one of those grim-faced professors who seems to delight in your ignorance. He’s more like that one teacher who showed you how to make a potato battery in middle school—a bit cheeky, a bit irreverent, and genuinely excited to show you something cool. His book is peppered with stories of humanity’s great structural cock-ups, from bridges that wobbled like drunkards to airplanes that forgot how not to explode. It’s Schadenfreude for the science-minded.

And oh, the metaphors! Gordon’s analogies are the secret weapon of the book. He compares materials to personalities in a way that’s both amusing and strangely insightful. Steel? A reliable, slightly boring friend who’ll always help you move house. Glass? The elegant, fragile aristocrat who looks great in a suit but panics under pressure. And wood—bless its organic little heart—is the multitasking genius of the group, good for everything from ships to chopsticks. By the time he’s done, you’re practically rooting for these materials as if they were the cast of a sitcom.

But Gordon isn’t just about laughs. Beneath the humor lies a sharp critique of humanity’s arrogance—our tendency to assume that because something stands up today, it won’t fall down tomorrow. He seems to relish the opportunity to remind us that nature, physics, and plain old bad luck are always lurking, ready to turn a perfectly good bridge into a very expensive pile of rubble. “Failure,” he seems to say, “is not an option—it’s a certainty. So you’d better learn from it.”

The real genius of Structures, though, is how it changes the way you see the world. After reading it, you’ll never look at a building or a chair the same way again. You’ll find yourself admiring the humble rivet, questioning the wisdom of overly minimalist furniture, and perhaps quietly judging the next skyscraper you see. It’s a book that sneaks into your daily life in the most unexpected ways.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why some things fall down while others stand tall—or if you just enjoy a good laugh at humanity’s expense—this is the book for you. It’s clever without being smug, funny without being silly, and endlessly fascinating. And if you take nothing else from it, let it be this: gravity always wins. But it’s a hell of a lot more fun fighting it with Gordon by your side.