Best known for his books of amusing poems and parodies of familiar songs, Katz offers a collective biography of 12 significant but lesser-known figures (7 men, 5 women) in technology. These "Awesome Achievers" include Nils Bohlin ("the three-point lap and shoulder seat belt"), Mary Anderson (windshield wipers), Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the World Wide Web), Percy Spencer (the microwave oven), and Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist whose research led to products as varied as fiber optic cables, caller ID, and solar cells. Katz is quite serious about introducing these inventors and their accomplishments, and his writing will engage kids, who probably won't mind when his trademark facetious humor takes center stage. This generally happens at the end of each short chapter, where he shares amusing patter, daffy multiple-choices quizzes, silly slogans, and some of his own, truly terrible gadget ideas. "Drink coasters made of salami and bologna slices," anyone? Katz presents a combination of technology, history, and wit that's likely to please young readers. A companion volume, Awesome Achievers in Science, will be published simultaneously.

This chatty collective biography highlights achievements of 12 lesser-known inventors and innovators in technologies that are now commonplace in homes, workplaces, and public spaces.With the exceptions of windshield wipers, Scotchguard™, and the three-point lap-and-shoulder seat belt, the technologies discussed are either digital or electronic. Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, unleashed Pong upon the world in 1972. Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus invented the conversational personal assistant Siri. Marie Van Brittan Brown pioneered the use of closed-circuit television. The research of Shirley Ann Jackson, the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. from MIT, led to the faster and more reliable transmission of data through fiber optic cables and to the development of the solar cell. The biographical profiles and explanations of the technologies, written in an informal, conversational tone, are quite brief, even superficial, with little or no elaboration about their greater cultural or societal impacts. Katz includes lighthearted elements such as imagined poems, song lyrics, and diary entries with each profile. Neither these nor the unremarkable pencil-drawn illustrations that complement the comical addendums shed significant light on the figures profiled. A serious flaw is the lack of source notes, bibliographic information, and any other backmatter. The lineup has a greater proportion of women than seen in many tech overviews, but only Jackson and Brown, both African American, seem to be people of color.Poor execution sinks this effort. (Collective biography. 8-12)