Abstract

106 BOOK REVIEWS technologies and the study of the processes and outcomes of transdisciplinary collaborative scien- tific, training, and action research initiatives. Shalini Misra School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, USA shalini@vt.edu © 2020 Shalini Misra https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2020.1747288 Designing MIT: Bosworth’s New Tech, by Mark M Jarzombek, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 2017, 174 pp., $25.00 (paperback), ISBN 9780998117010 As a postgraduate student, I was given advice on writing a thesis. Avoid lengthy appendices and footnotes, said my tutor, because they will give the impression that you have not properly woven your materials into your argument. On this basis Mark Jarzombek’s book gets off to an unfortunate start. For of the 174 pages in this short and heavily illustrated book, no fewer than 70 are given over to architectural notes, appendices, general notes, and the index. Yet where the author gets into his stride, the discussion is worth the read and the prose is clear and uncluttered. Nineteenth-century MIT was housed in a collection of plain buildings across Boston’s Back Bay. Of between two to six stories, to a contemporary viewer these buildings have honesty and integrity, not unlike the textile mill buildings in Manchester UK, the world’s first