Waldman is clearly exhilarated by the story he’s telling, and his zest comes through in the book’s best turns of phrase.

When grand vision meets repeated humiliation we usually get tragedy or comedy. But SAM is not sad, or funny ha-ha. It is peculiar, though.

Relating the history of Construction Robotics and SAM, Waldman illustrates the tension between innovation and tradition in a millennia-old profession.

Mr. Waldman follows all the drama like a fly on a brick wall, richly reporting scenes and conversations, many on job sites where both circuitry and civility break down. The book is reminiscent of a reality-TV show about a scrappy startup, complete with backstory segments as we learn the pasts and personalities of each new hire. There are also a lot of digressions—the history of the bricklayers union, how much pinboys at bowling alleys were tipped, how literal sausages are made, Mr. Peters’s 16th-century ancestors, his high-school swim coach’s career as a famous-in-Japan professional wrestler. None of it is boring, exactly, but the book is not in a hurry to get anywhere.

Waldman offers a lively, accessible overview of the bricklayer’s art, which is much more complex than one might think. Apart from engendering an appreciation for the uses of technology, the author also adds to the literature surrounding the dignity of artful labor. Human meets machine, and both prevail in an engaging story of technology and discovery..

...a lively look at the team behind SAM.