|
| The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World | 
| Author: Phillip F. Schewe
Publisher: Joseph Henry Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $17.39
You Save: $10.56 (38%)
New (26) from $17.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 123927
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 030910260X
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.7932
EAN: 9780309102605
ASIN: 030910260X
Publication Date: February 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
The electrical grid goes everywhere?it's the largest and most complex machine ever made. Yet the system is built in such a way that the bigger it gets, the more inevitable its collapse.
Named the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering, the electrical grid is the largest industrial investment in the history of humankind. It reaches into your home, snakes its way to your bedroom, and climbs right up into the lamp next to your pillow. At times, it almost seems alive, like some enormous circulatory system that pumps life to big cities and the most remote rural areas.
Constructed of intricately interdependent components, the grid operates on a rapidly shrinking margin for error. Things can?and do?go wrong in this system, no matter how many preventive steps we take. Just look at the colossal 2003 blackout, when 50 million Americans lost power due to a simple error at a power plant in Ohio; or the one a month later, which blacked out 57 million Italians. And these two combined don't even compare to the 2001 outage in India, which affected 226 million people.
The Grid is the first history of the electrical grid intended for general readers, and it comes at a time when we badly need such a guide. As we get more and more dependent on electricity to perform even the most mundane daily tasks, the grid's inevitable shortcomings will take a toll on populations around the globe. At a moment when energy issues loom large on the nation's agenda and our hunger for electricity grows, The Grid is as timely as it is compelling.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Fantastic June 12, 2008
I read this book while I was working at a nuclear power plant. It really opened my eyes to the world of electricity - who makes it and how it get transferred to our homes.
This book opens the eyes to the past, present and future of an industry everyone in developed countries is dependent on. It's not dry or technical, but delightfully relates the people and the events in a way which is interesting to any layman.
After reading this book, I did some calculations and found that 17.5% of our energy produced is lost between the grid and our homes. There's a lot of room for improvement there; many of the topics discussed in "The Grid" are useful and relevant to our current energy problems.
The Grid was so good I passed the book on to my father, who loved it, and then passed it on to my 14-year-old brother. I hope you all enjoy reading this book as much as I and my family did.
Puzzled by negative reviews March 24, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I came to this site to write a 5-star review and was puzzled to see that a number of less enthusiastic reviewers had panned "Grid." I suppose readers have highly variable expectations. I came to the book with a lot of knowledge of the subject, looking for clear and lively reading for my undergraduate students in a course on energy policy, and for that Schewe's book is admirably suited. Unlike some negative reviewers, I thought the book an excellent overview of the grid, its history, its technology, and some of its major problems and prospects. Schewe likes word play, providing a chuckle per chapter, but perhaps others find his embedded jokes corny -- or miss them altogether. Anyway, my thumbs are up. This is an intelligent book, well researched and well written.
 Uneven quality and hinting low opinion of readers March 10, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
My reaction can be summed up with a misquote, "The world could use a good book on electrical power. This book is not it."
"The Grid" is uneven. Some chapters teach history that I did not know. Other chapters range from "also ran" to trite recounting of material that has been prominent in news magazines for five years or longer.
Worst of all, passages in the book suggest contempt for readers, hinting that they are less intelligent than the author. It may be true, but such an opinion makes a mid-quality book unacceptable.
This reviewers misquote was stimulated by the author's weak attempts at humor couched as misquotes of trite sayings.
It could have been much better. March 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Phillip Schewe has written the story of the creation of the electrical grid. I was hoping for a clearly written explanation of what the grid is, how it works and how it came about. Unfortunately Schewe has written a shallow tale about the personalities involved often using overwrought prose.
The Grid starts with the earliest efforts to install electricity in New York. We get a brief glimpse of the technical challenges and a few superficial anecdotes about the politics involved, as well as some description of the key players. I would have liked to read more about the technical aspects. The competition between Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse is reported, but not described well enough for me to understand what it was really about. More on this might have been interesting too. We now use alternating current and it works well, but why did Edison favor direct current?
The big black out in the North East US in 1965 is discussed, but more time is spent on telling us who was in what control room then about how the black out happened, or what was done to prevent them in the future.
Later we read about the Tennessee Valley Authority, which serves as a segue to the authors discussion of the correlation between low electric power consumption and poverty. This is followed some irrelevant information about how corruption in the third world has reduced electric production in those countries.
Bizarrely The Grid ends with a story about the Apollo moon mission. Schewe argues that this brought the grid to the moon. The moon mission was very cool and is a fascinating topic, but it was not related to the electric grid.
In addition to not being able to stick to the subject Schewe writes in a florid and overwrought prose style that I found difficult to plough through.
 Uninspiring March 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
While the topic has such great potential, the book is pedestrian, not well written, and scattered. I kept wanting more -- an explanation of electricity generation's role in climate change, of the potential for distributed generation, for the enormous subsidies and intrique associated with power politics. Disappointing.
|
|
|
Wildlife, nature and the Environment
Sponsored Links
Learn how to get your own Amazon Book shop | |
