{"id":328922,"date":"2010-02-16T20:16:31","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T01:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/2010-02-16-two-books-that-blew-my-mind\/"},"modified":"2010-02-16T20:16:31","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T01:16:31","slug":"two-books-that-blew-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/328922","title":{"rendered":"Two books that blew my mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tby David Roberts <\/p>\n<p>I have a  piece in the latest issue of the American Prospect called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/prospect.org\/cs\/articles?article=this_is_how_youll_get_there\">This Is How You&#8217;ll Get There<\/a>.&#8221; It&#8217;s a review of two books: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/gristmagazine\/detail\/0307277194\">Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)<\/a>, by journalist Tom Vanderbilt, and <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/gristmagazine\/detail\/0262013827\">Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century<\/a>, by three brilliant supergeeks (two from GM&#8217;s advanced auto division; one from MIT&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/cities.media.mit.edu\/\">Smart Cities program<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>I know book reviews aren&#8217;t the most exciting genre in the world, but I quite like this one, mainly because the  books kind of blew my mind. The first  is about the quirks and dysfunctions of our current transportation system; the second is about the transportation system of the future. Though Reinventing the Automobile is written in dry, wonky engineer-speak, it adds up to something fairly radical. The message: building 21st century transportation means building 21st century cities.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, go read it!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/2010-02-11-the-10-greenest-and-brownest-things-about-vancouver-olympics\/\">The 10 greenest and brownest things about Vancouver<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/2010-02-10-i-paid-50-for-this-book-and-all-i-got-was-a-feeling-of-hope-and-\/\">I paid $50 for this book and all I got was this lousy feeling of hope and goodwill<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/2010-02-10-ask-umbras-change-agent-hannah-salwen\/\">Ask Umbra&#8217;s Change Agent: Hannah Salwen<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=8c01c228662c8e1f810acbf30f59cdac&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=8c01c228662c8e1f810acbf30f59cdac&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2223\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by David Roberts I have a piece in the latest issue of the American Prospect called &#8220;This Is How You&#8217;ll Get There.&#8221; It&#8217;s a review of two books: Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), by journalist Tom Vanderbilt, and Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":765,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/765"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}