Pompeii by Robert Harris: an engineering reading

Pompeii, the bestselling novel by Robert Harris, is a rich source of ideas regarding engineering attitude and outlook. Its main protagonist is a young Roman hydraulics engineer in charge of the Roman aqueduct that served Pompeii and skirted Vesuvius at the time of the destruction of the former by the eruption of the latter in AD 79. Logic, leadership, ethics, science, nature, culture and public service are some of the wide ranging themes that come under the purview of the novel, all of them related to the art and practice of engineering.