Elon Musk, Jimi Hendrix and the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle all make appearances in a book out on Feb. 7 on the performance of megaprojects. Based mainly on the work of an academic at the U.K.'s Oxford University, "How Big things Get Done" is not a heavy tome but a pacy trot through the causes of project pitfalls and ways to avoid them.
As chair of major program management at Oxford's Saïd Business School, lead author Bent Flyvbjerg claims vast knowledge of the performance of megaprojects, stemming from a database accumulated since the late 1990s. His erudition makes it onto the page with fluid prose, no doubt shaped by his co-author, the New York-based writer Dan Gardner.