Kobuk the Destroyer: And Other Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering

An exuberant exploration of why the stuff we use (mostly) works—and a celebration of the unsung engineers who ensure it does.

When a manufacturer offers a 10,000-mile warranty on a car or slaps a “bear-resistant” label on a camping cooler, what do we know about how trustworthy that promise is, and how it’s backed up? For the cooler, it’s Kobuk the Destroyer, the fiercest member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s panel of product-testing bears: Gifted at cracking locks and foiling ma...