Stan Lee by Bob Batchelor

Stan Lee is the face of comic books to many and has become a sort of celebrity in his more than 70-year long career as a storyteller. He began to hone his image on the college lecture circuit in the 1960s while he created a new type of superhero, typified by the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, in collaboration with artists including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. It was a role Lee was ready for; he had been trying out ways to promote comic books and himself since the 1940s.

Bob Batchelor presents Lee’s life in Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Though not a long biography, it starts with Lee’s childhood in New York City and runs through his 95^th year, when he is still producing ideas for comics and television.

Lee was present nearly at the beginning of comic books. He started as an assistant to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain America. When they moved on after contentions with Timely Comics, a forerunner to Marvel, Lee stepped up to become editor while still a teenager.

Lee was ready to quit comics by the time the 1960s. He craved to work in a respectable field and was tired of chasing trends. The right combination of opportunity and encouragement from his wife pushed Lee to write the kind of comics he would want to read, and it became a sensation.

Though Lee will always be associated with Marvel comics, by the 1980s his focus was shifting to television and film. It was a rough transition for Lee, but he had some success, especially in the production of animated adaptions of Marvel characters that were popular in the 1990s.

Lee has stumbled some in his post-Marvel career, notably the debacle of new media company Stan Lee Media. He seems to have recovered somewhat with POW! Entertainment.

Lee has detractors, which Batchelor acknowledges. Batchelor doesn’t refute those detractors, but his take on Lee is overall very positive. Lee appears to be someone who tries not to be tied down by his past, neither dwelling on his failures nor being content with many successes.

Lee was a central figure in creating some of the most popular characters and stories in the world. Well into his 90s, he is still working and coming up with ideas that find their way into print, television and the Internet.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

Spider-Man

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Batchelor, Bob. Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

Marvel Comics has a long history in comic books, especially superhero comics. It’s first superheroes, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, debuted in 1939 and the company is currently unrolling popular series of films based on a The Avengers, a superhero team that first appeared in comics in 1963.

The extended, interconnected, iterative melodrama of Marvel’s comics is a complicated fictional world. The real-world company has a complicated history, too. It started as a scion of a pulp magazine publisher seeking diversify and is now a part of media powerhouse Walt Disney Company. Sean Howe provides a detailed history of the company in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

Howe divides the history of the Marvel into five major ages. He discusses the early history of the company, but Marvel as we know it today could mark its origins in the resurgence of superhero comics of the early 1960s, after a post-World War II slump that all but the most popular titles.

The succeeding ages roughly correspond to the decades. The 1960s marked the birth of modern Marvel. The 1970s were a time of artistic experimentation when comics, especially Marvel, were embraced on college campus and in the counterculture.

In the 1980s, kids who grew up reading Marvel became adults writing the comics. It was also a time when corporate culture began to consume the company—though the priority of making money, executive interference and possibly shady business was something that went back to the days of the pulps. This decade also marked a change in the way comics were sold, shifting from newsstands and grocery-store spinners to specialty shops, which created opportunities and problems for comics publishers.

The 1990s was a period of excess. Comics creators were finally making money (at least some of them were), but old contentions between publishers—especially Marvel—and writers and artists led to the rise of superstars spinning off to publish works to which they would retain the rights. The growth in comics collecting encouraged marketing practice, especially at Marvel, that eventually led to a bust.

Throughout this time, Marvel’s various owners had been attempting to transition the company from a comics publisher to a media company that leveraged its intellectual property in many ways. In the 2000s, Marvel has done that. A criticism often leveled against Marvel today is that the comics are driven by decisions to make the characters marketable in other media, especially movies and toys.

Comics have come a long way since I started reading them as a kid. For one thing, they cost 10 times as much. Howe wraps up with the opinion that Marvels products are better, and in some ways I agree. However, I think comics often uses the words mature and adult when they are simply prurient, and that the improvement in printing quality is not always accompanied by improvements in story or art. I have mixed feelings about the multi-issues stories designed for collection into graphic novels aimed at book retailers, but I think the event-driven mega-crossovers that have become standard for Marvel and DC don’t move me much—I’d rather read a good short story than an overblown novel.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

1939 by David Gelernter

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Howe, S. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. New York: HarperCollins, 2012.

The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven

Psychologist David Niven draws lessons from scientific studies on happiness in The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People. The book has 100 short chapters. Each has a recommendation based on the results of research. The book was published in 2000 and the research cited was published in the mid- to late-1990s.

As you might expect from such a structure, the book seems to go all over the place. Even so, some themes and trends are readily discernable.

For instance, relationships have a profound effect on happiness—more important than our material possessions. If we have close relationships with friends or family, we are much more likely to feel good about ourselves. Supportiveness in relationships is important to our happiness and it works both ways—giving and receiving. Being a good friend is as important as having friends; follow through on your commitments. Make peace with others; the pain of working through the conflict is usually much less than the pain of losing a relationship. Relationships are important at every age.

A sense of purpose and goals are also important to happiness. Volunteering is a good way to find a sense of purpose; helping others can help us feel better. Goals should be realistic—working toward and attaining goals feels good, but striving toward goals you cannot reach causes dissatisfaction. Celebrate your achievements along the way and remember them.

Your thoughts and outlook also affect your happiness. If you must assume what is motivating someone’s action, assuming the best will lead to more happiness. Don’t dwell on past problems or think of what might have been; concentrate on what you can do now to step toward where you want to go. Remember happy moments from your past to be happier today.

Related to that, be grateful for what have. Having a lot does not contribute as much to happiness as enjoying and appreciating what you have. By the way, watching television can lead to discontentment by stirring up covetousness.

There is a lot of other advice in Niven’s book. If you pick it up, you’re likely to find something that might help you be a little happier.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

Niven, David. The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientist Have Learned and How You Can Use It. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000.

Depreciation Systems by Frank K. Wolf & W. Chester Fitch

Depreciation System, by engineering professors Frank K. Wolf and W. Chester Fitch, describes methods for estimating depreciation for utilities. Rates of regulated public utilities are usually based on balancing the public need for affordable rates with then investor’s need for a reasonable rate of return. While it is only one factor in setting utility rates, a reasonable accounting of depreciation is needed to determine the rate base and assure that the capital of the investors is recovered.

Depreciation can be estimated in several way, some more practicable and popular than others. Wolf and Fitch present these methods in a systematic and orderly fashion. They present a system of classification by which methods can be compared or contrasted using a handful of more basic concepts or methods. This permits them to be thorough, though the result is sometimes tedious. Fortunately, they do not give equal attention to every possible combination of elements because some are not used or are not very workable.

Some of the methods they describe have been in use for more than a century, but the book was written in the early 1990s, so the authors assume the readers will be using computers. Because this is mostly a matter of spreadsheets, the computerized calculation methods hold up even after 20 years. However, depreciation methods do not change rapidly; many depreciation professionals are still using software that was developed in the mid-1980s, which is still considered current (at least from a methodological point of view).

Like most references or textbooks, this does not make for interesting reading. I undertook the task for professional reasons. It is a good reference, though. In some cases it may be a little too complicated for someone new to the profession. In general, the authors try to focus more on the concept than the more complex details (you can’t write a reference that prescribes a solution to every problem a depreciation professional might face), while still presenting thorough descriptions, with examples, of the major methods in use.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:

Public Utility Depreciation by NARUC

Wolf, Frank K., & W. Chester Fitch. Depreciation Systems. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1994.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner look into the unexpected relationships between aspects of our society in their book Freakonomics. They not particularly interested in the things you might expect economists to write about such as business, markets or investment. Instead, they look at cheating, crime, expertise and parenting.

There is no particular theme of the book, except possibly that common explanations and expectations are often off the mark. Levitt and Dubner are skeptical of conventional wisdom and expertise. They are interested in data and what questions can properly be put to that data.

They sometimes come to conclusions that some might find disturbing or troubling. For instance, they trace the drop in crime rates in the 1990s to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s. Many of the women who had abortions in the wake of Roe vs. Wade were poor, had low education, or very young. All of these traits in the parents tend to produce worse outcomes for children, including a higher likelihood of committing crime. As the first post-Roe cohort of children reached their teen years in the 1990s, there were fewer who had been raised in those conditions that may have pushed them into crime, and therefore fewer budding criminals and a decline in crime rates.

Reading this made me think of the arguments of eugenicists. They believed that a host of social ills, including crime, could be mitigated by keeping the unfit people from reproducing. To the eugenicists, unfit was essentially equivalent to nonwhite, though it also extended to the feebleminded (a disease a eugenically-minded psychiatrist or psychologist might have found in any poor, uneducated person). The eugenicists saw intelligence, criminality, poverty and host of other features as fixed and hereditary. Limiting the reproduction of the unfit through abortion or sterilization would reduce and eventually eliminate poverty and crime.

Of course, Levitt and Dubner are not eugenicists. Nor do they propose abortion as means to reduce crime. Crime does not have its roots in race or intelligence. It is strongly tied to poverty and low education. Charles Dickens chilling portrayed Ignorance and Want in A Christmas Carol, and they are still a threat to all of us.

Each chapter reveals an interesting twist on some subject, though few are as potentially charged as that on crime. In another chapter, the authors show that crime does not pay, except for those at the top, on unlike in a corporation. In spite of faddish thoughts on the issue, parents matter, though maybe not in the ways we’d like to think.

My previous reading has inclined me to focus on the darkest part of the book, but the overall tone is conversational and light, though the authors are not flippant about serous subjects. They are not technical either. Their use of statistics is straightforward. They do not delve deep into theory, though they focus much on the central theory of economics that people respond to incentives.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

How We Got Here by Andy Kessler

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Levitt, Steven D., & Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow, 2005.

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

As you would expect from a medium that has survived decades, comic books have changed with time to adapt to changes in culture.  In Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright describes that history from the birth of comics as a new medium in the 1930s through the 1990s. Though the book was published a decade ago, it still provides a good perspective on where comics are. He mentions the advent of electronic publishing at the close of the book. I think it is fair to say that electronic publishing and distribution has not radically changed comics, though there may be potential for that in recent developments in the business of self-publishing comics electronically.

Bradford is an academic historian. Comic Book Nation is intended to be a cultural history of comics. Of course, Bradford can’t help but cover some the same ground that other writers cover, though this book predates many of the more academic or journalistic books on the subject. Some publishers, creators, and titles are just too important and influential not to mention. Even so, he tries to stick to his purpose and show how the times were reflected in comics.

I think it is fair to say that comics, and popular media generally, reflect cultures more than they influence them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be popular. This reflection isn’t always simplistic, even in comics. Comics writers and artists, like other producers of popular media, tried to address the concerns and interests of their audiences, sometimes realistically, sometimes idealistically, and sometimes with cynicism.

Of course, it was Superman who sparked the immense popularity of superhero comics, and comics generally. That popularity spawned imitators, as it does today. The early Superman, created by Cleveland high school students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was a reformer. He battled gangsters and crooked politicians. He was a New Dealer. Many comics supported New Deal policies to address the Great Depression.

Superheroes made the transition to World War II with ease. Writers had to address why the costumed crusaders weren’t enlisting or bringing the war to a swift end. They must have succeeded, because superhero titles were very popular, even among American soldiers. Comics were pro-war, and many costumed heroes were battling foreign menaces, especially the Nazis, even before America entered the war.

Superhero titles floundered after the war, but other genres did well. Comics generally supported American policies of intervention in smaller nations and containment of Communism. The medium reflected the post-war hopefulness that there could be peace and international cooperation with America leading as a benevolent superpower.

The post-war years had troubles, too. People feared the misuse and spread of nuclear weapons. The Korean War was a doubtful venture that many felt lacked the clear and good purpose of World War II. This applied to Viet Nam, too, where the additional problems of guerilla warfare challenged notions of heroism.

Comic books faced other challenges. The excesses of crime and horror comics brought about industry-operated censorship. Television competed for the time and money of children.

Much of the latter part of the book shows how the comics industry found a way to survive these problems. The 1960s introduced a resurgence of creativity and superheroes, especially the flawed fantasy men of Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics. New models of distribution were introduced in the 1980s. Electronic media has the potential to reinvigorate comics.

Because my adolescence was in the 1980s, I’d like to mention a few things about it. Unlike some comics historians, Bradford spends a fair amount of time on that decade, especially in a book that covers more than 60 years. He provides a pretty good description of how Frank Miller and Alan Moore challenged the superhero model and brought a lot of new interest to it. If anything, Miller and Moore were too influential. A lot of comics are still derivative of their best works.  Imitation of success is common in comics, and too often the imitators do not have the skill or understanding of the masters.

What I’d really like to mention is that Bradford acknowledges John Byrne’s contribution. Byrne was a very popular writer and artist in the 1980s. He did some pretty good stuff, too. He also indulged in excesses that presaged the excesses of the 1990s, but at least he did it with a self-aware wink. Byrne brought fun back to comics. Then as now, I like comics with a good dose of fun.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

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STEM Books

I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related books (and counting).  STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  As you may have seen in the news, there is a push to improve STEM education, interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers in these fields.  The idea is that these will be the skills needed by workers of the future.  If you’re a STEM educator or a student considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of these books.

I’ll confess that I’m not an educator, but I think most of these books will be accessible to high school and college students, and a few to middle school students.  The list is also a reflection of my career and interests in engineering, public health, policy, and history.  Even with these biases, I think it is a good list for someone looking for STEM-related books.

How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection by David F. Dufty

I was fascinated by robots as a kid.  I enjoyed reading Isaac Asimov’s robot stories.  I longed for the Omnibot 2000 in the Sears Wishbook.

Robots have come a long way.  In How to Build an Android, David F. Dufty describes the short strange life of a very complex robot made to look and talk like science fiction author Philip K. Dick.  The robot had a very sophisticated and lifelike head and complex artificial intelligence.  As with most complex things, it was the work of many people who had to solve a lot of problems.

If you’re interested in robotics, this is an interesting nontechnical book.  In addition, you’ll get introduced to some freaky sci-fi.  You may even get as (somewhat) legitimate reason to use the word “Dickhead” (capitalized, it refers to a fan of PKD, so don’t go using it on anyone).

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways by Earl Swift

The Interstate highway system in the United States is one of the most enormous structures built.  Some of the prospective STEM students who read this may actually be younger than the Intestate system, though in some sense it is never complete because it needs constant repair and maintenance.  The Interstates were completed in the 1990s, but the Federal-Aid Highways go back to 1916.

Earl Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads.  If you interested in automobiles or transportation, it’s a good read.

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Deborah Cadbury describes seven wonders of engineering in Dreams of Iron and Steel.  It covers almost a century of history, but many of the events are concentrated in the Victorian Era.  That was a time of great technological innovation.

Though the book is history, many of the structures still stand.  Railways, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Suez and Panama Canals, and Hoover Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Though the memory of Professor Wragg’s sneer prompts me to not make this confession, part of my interest in science and technology came from comic books.  Iron Man was cool.  Spider-Man’s web shooters were very cool.  Superhero comics are full of fantasy, admittedly, but the strange, unrealistic science and technology they depict have inspired many to study STEM in reality.

Physicist John Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes.  Sometimes comics get there science right.  Even when they get it wrong, it can be instructive.  If you know what people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this book to be a great introduction to physics.

1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics by David Acheson

Here is another confession: I’m not especially interested in math.  I endured a lot of math classes to study engineering.  Reading David Acheson’s 1089 and All That did not require such endurance.  For one reason, it is a short book.  For another, Acheson doesn’t expect his readers to be mathematicians; it is enough to follow the outline of the math he discusses.

I recommend this book because so many people have a fear of math.  1089 can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math phobias.  Just take a deep breath, relax, and follow along as well as you can.  You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a way.

The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said it Couldn’t be Built by Judith St. George

Judith St. George’s The Brooklyn Bridge is a short history of and iconic bridge.  Written for the bridge’s 100^th anniversary, it is also the story of the engineers who sacrificed life and health to see it completed: John Roebling and his son Washington.  John Roebling was a German immigrant who built many suspension bridges and owed a wire-making business.  He gave his son and extraordinary education in bridge engineering for the time, and before beginning work on the Brooklyn Bridge he served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Why should a cutting-edge STEM student read about a bridge that is almost 130 years old?  It’s because we still use and rely on very successful, centuries old technologies.  Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an important part of our economy.  As recently as 2010, New York City and the federal government committed $500 million to repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski

STEM lumps together science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Is there a difference between science and engineering?  Is it important?

Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes there is an important difference.  At heart, science is about increasing knowledge.  Engineering is about invention.  Of course, new knowledge makes new invention possible.  Just as often, though, engineering runs ahead of science.  Sometimes science didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments to conduct new observations and experiments.  The invention of the microscope made possible the science of microbiology.  Steam engines were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific understanding of thermodynamics.  In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science (study of natural things) or branch of physics.

Petroski’s focus in the book is the importance of engineering to policymaking, where it is often overshadowed by science.  Policy, science, and engineering play off of each other a lot.  Most of my career as an engineer has been related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

The Ghost Map by science writer Steven Johnson is the story of the birth of epidemiology.  Epidemiology is a medical science that uses statistics to help us understand how diseases operate in a population.  Using various statistical and geographic tools, long before we had computers and GIS, physician John Snow demonstrated that cholera, once a recurring plague that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in some outbreaks, was a waterborne disease.  This understanding, initially met with much skepticism, allowed officials to intervene to prevent the spread of the disease.  For those who say of their math classes, “I’ll never us this,” here is a case where math (and science and policy) were used to make a great difference.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

It is not much publicized today that the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806 had a partly scientific mission.  Captains Lewis and Clark were charges with bringing back samples of the flora, fauna, and culture of the western territories.  It was also hoped that they would find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean.  In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes about the scientific mission as well as the policy, diplomacy, and commercial hopes the expedition carried.

Of course, what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition is that it was a great adventure.  There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful adventurers and explorers. 

Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson

A list like this deserves something strange, creepy, and more fun than you care to admit.  Right now, thousands of very young future STEM workers are catching bugs and snakes, breaking their toys to see what is inside, or staring into space with a weird expression of vacancy and concentration.

Jan Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a morbid book.  It is sometimes humorous, especially in consideration of topic.  From a STEM point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over time.  The fears and activities of our forefathers may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of what they knew.  Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility.  Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.

If you’re looking for something for a younger student, check out this post→ from Joanne Loves Science or these recommendations→ from STEM Friday.  By the way, I also write about engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.

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The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Swift, Earl.  The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

The American interstate system is often thought to be a product of the Eisenhower administration.  It’s named for him.  However, the nearly 47,000 miles of interstate were conceived largely before Eisenhower’s presidency.  Even as he observed the Army’s 62-day, cross-country convoy of 1919, engineers were laying the political and technical foundations of national highways.  Earl Swift tells this longer history of the interstates in The Big Roads.

When Americans began calling for better roads, the typical road was mud.  The loudest calls for better roads at the beginning of the 20^th Century were cyclists, especially the colorful Carl Fisher.  Fisher’s most famous work is the Indianapolis Speedway, where a popular 500-mile race continues to be run.  His promotion of the Lincoln Highway, the first coast-to-coast highway (at least on paper), provided an important antecedent to the interstates.

The Lincoln Highway Association operated on a system that informed later highway development.  Rather than build a huge new highway, it selected existing roads for improvement, joining them together in a highway.  New roads were built only if necessary.  The association, a private organization that raised private funds for road improvement and route promotion, was a model for later systems in another way.  The Lincoln Highway was built and improved in pieces by a number of local and state agencies.  The association provided a route, coordination, promotion, encouragement, and sometimes funding, but the road improvements were mostly local works.

Thomas MacDonald, an Iowa highway engineer, was using a similar model as he worked for that state.  He worked with city and county road departments to coordinate improvements leading to a statewide system of decent roads.  When he became director of the Office of Public Roads, he brought this model to the federal highway program, institutionalizing it in the Federal Aid system that began in 1916.

Of course, the U.S. highways that developed under this system were not like modern interstates.  They were open to anyone along them.  In rural areas, they might have been and often still are long ribbons of pavement crossed by the occasional farm road.  In cities, they became crowded with business, especially restaurants and gas stations, that slowed traffic to a crawl.  This problems gave rise to the concept of a limited-access highway, first proposed by Benton MacKaye, the conservationist who conceived the Appalachian Trail.

MacDonald and his engineers began working the concept.  His office produced a report, authored primarily by Hubert Sinclair Fairbanks, that laid out most of the current interstate system in 1938.  Fairbanks supported that idea that better roads might solve problems related to slums and blight in cities.  The recommendations of this report and a follow-up commission were largely implemented in law in 1944, when the term “interstate” first appeared in legislation.

The plans for an interstate system languished during World War II and the years immediately following.  Eisenhower comes into the picture at this time because he strongly supported funding for the interstate system.

Highway engineers saw themselves as providing a good and giving the people what they wanted.  Along the way, as Fairbanks suggested, they could clean up the cities.  As they began to implement their plans in earnest, opposition arose.

Swift gives particular attention to two interstate opponents.  Critic Lewis Mumford provided the intellectual and philosophical foundation for the Freeway Revolt.  Joe Wiles, a black professional and veteran, organized opposition to Interstate 70 in Baltimore which resulted in changes to the plan and help unite the white and black communities in that city.  The federal and state governments began to take seriously the possibility that interstates could have a negative impact on the communities near them

The intestate system, finally completed in the 1990s, is the largest public works project in history.  Now that it is built, it needs to be maintained.  It will be expensive: $225 billion a year for the next 50 years to keep it in good shape.  That is more than twice what we’re spending.  In addition, improved fuel efficiency and reduced driving prompted by the economic downturn has reduced gas tax revenues for the Highway Trust Fund.  In the near future, we may need to find new ways to pay for maintaining our transportation marvel.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Brooklyn Bridge by Judith St. George

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

The Great Bridge by David McCollough

On the Mainlines by William B. Claycomb

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