Timeline of events: Circus of Caligula to the Hoover Dam -- Timeline of events: 1400 to 1750 -- The Pope's problem -- Building the Basilica -- Master builders and their methods -- The able assistant -- Mattematica and Scienza -- The opinions -- Critics at every corner -- Professor Poleni -- A magician's touch -- The memoirs -- The advent of modern engineering

"In Saving Michelangelo's Dome, Stanford-trained engineer Wayne Kalayjian illustrates how new ideas in science and mathematics established an entirely new way of looking at the world--as well as solving its complex problems. In the end, readers will appreciate that in saving Michelangelo's Dome from collapse, these three mathematicians and one determined pope unknowingly invented the profession of engineering as we practice it today. With it, they transformed the architectural world and ushered in generations of future buildings and structures that, otherwise, would never have been built"--Publisher's description