A fascinating look at something most of us take for granted---our street address. I learned a lot of about city planning, what happens when you don't have address and what makes street addresses so important. A real deep dive into something so mundane yet so important.

I really didn't expect a book about street addresses to be so compelling, but here we are. Deirdre Mask has written a compelling, thoughtful exploration of what it means to have an address (and not to have an address). . I really appreciated her global perspective, and I learned a lot about things I'd never thought about before.

Maybe like 4.75 stars but who cares.
Love love love love love love love. This book was everything I was hoping it would be and so much more. Sometimes I just have the urge to learn a butt-load about a random topic and this book delivered in the form of street addresses. It was so fascinating and informative without being info-dumpy, and raised some incredible points that I don't think the average person ever thinks about. I learned about cool charities and companies I had never heard of, and saw historical periods in a new light. If the topic sounds remotely interesting to you, I would definitely pick this one up. Each chapter covers a different area of the world and concept, and some of them were definitely more interesting to me than others, but I think there is something to enjoy on every page.

What a fascinating book! I was blessed to receive an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. I have to say I was totally captivated. Deirdre Mask is a good storyteller and her research is grand. I found this to be eye-opening. Who knew!?! I have always taken addresses for granted. I did know about the wildly different way of addressing in Japan and was glad to hear a couple of interesting explanations. I learned a lot.

The Address Book is more a collection of long-form journalism articles than a cohesive book. The subject matter is fascinating, but as most nonfiction does these days, it leans heavily on anecdote and is very light on analysis. It is well-researched (according to the kindle version, nearly 30% of the content is endnotes and references) but should be taken as food for thought, not a comprehensive treatment of any of the subjects presented in relation to addresses.

What an entertaining and educational volume on addresses. From why it’s important to have a street address, to how roads are named and the political and cultural and implications of addresses.

This delightfully entertaining book really enlightened me to a subject that I had never noticed before. I absolutely loved the rich details of how and why we have addresses. The author wove such a rich narrative on how and why addresses are important that I was a little sad when it ended.
I loved that the author gave the history of the address, the why people don't have addresses, and everything in between.
The author did a great job of delivering factual information with a good balance of humor and relatablitiy.
I can't wait to read what else the author has in store for her readers!

One of the hardest things about reading non-fiction books is that they can be... boring... unless you have a good writer who can keep you hooked to read through the entire thing. Thankfully, this falls into that category.

I never really thought that reading a book about the history of addresses and situations around the world relating to addresses would be interesting, but somehow it is. As someone who has had an address my entire life, I never would have realized the problems not having one could cause, or how those without one would handle living. The epidemiology among other things really drew me in, but sometimes reading more than a chapter at a time can make it feel more of a slog. I enjoyed reading this a chapter/topic at a time when I had the chance.

Given how important of a topic it is (that a lot of us take for granted), I would definitely suggest picking this up for a read.

The simple street address is not only a relatively new concept, it is controversial everywhere it is implemented. Deirdre Mask has spent years traveling and discovering how people get on without addresses, how different implementations work (or don't), how addresses have figured in history, and how the digital world wants to change it all. She has put it together in her charming and engaging The Address Book.

The even/odd address system that most Americans are so accustomed to began in Philadelphia just three hundred years ago. It works, and yet Chicago had to to invent its own system 200 years later. The Japanese number blocks and not houses (and they are not alone in that). Some assign numbers by the year the building went up instead of sequentially. And many, many places still have no identifying systems in place at all. Mask uses the example of ancient Rome, a metropolis of a million, where without addresses, directions to find anyone or anything were, to put it mildly, involved. And yet, the city functioned as no other before it. Somewhat less functional was her experience in modern-day West Virginia, where a lack of street names and addresses led her to ask numerous people for directions, and still failing, had someone lead her almost there.

While that might seem unreasonable in a connected world, it does mean that locals become experts. Their knowledge grows vast, having to know people, landmarks, ruins, individual trees, people's homes, and what might have been there along the way before. Mask points out that GPS requires almost no brain power, and Americans use less and less of it make their way anywhere anymore.

In western society at least, not having a street address is fatal. It's essentially impossible to open a bank account, obtain a legitimate ID, rent an apartment, or get a job without one. This artificial prejudice is primarily a legal complication, of course. The government wants everyone to be traceable, for income tax purposes, for criminal pursuit, and for good old control. The unintended consequences include marginalizing an already marginal group, for life. Once they fall into that trap, there is rarely escape. Schemes to allow the homeless to use the address of a shelter, or vacant housing, have gone nowhere. If you don't have a street address, you are a non-entity. In the UK, organizations like the National Health Service and Unemployment services persist in using snail mail. If you don't get the letter and miss your appointment, it's curtains. You are canceled. She says: "Without an address, you are limited to communicating only with people who know you. And it's often people who don't know you who can most help you."

Address data is problematic. It has many great uses, but also dark sides. Addresses can mark people as living in bad districts, or racially dominated districts, poor or rich, religiously focused or mixed. Assumptions are assumed, loans approved or denied, interest rates lowered or raised, 911 calls answered or not, depending on the address attached. In the attempts over the years to assign addresses, people did not want them because they didn't want the junk mail, or to be followed or trackable. Freedom from street addresses is very real for some. Long before there were National ID numbers and Social Security Numbers to protest, there were street addresses that primarily benefited the monarch, the police and the tax collector.

The Address Book wanders globally and throughout history, with Mask injecting history lessons with great storytelling abilities. She tells the stories of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, of Marie-Theresa of Austria, the slums of Kolkata, how European Jews got their last names and navigating Tokyo all by their connections to street names and numbers.

Mask says the discussion of street names and numbers can dominate local politics, shooting to the top of the agenda when up for discussion. This can be a near daily thing in New York or Paris, where renaming is all but constant. Or it can happen when a community wants to remove Confederate names in the USA, or Nazi names in Germany. Some will cling to tradition and claim they will be lost otherwise. Some don't like the replacements. Developers will maneuver to obtain chic addresses, forcing the current user to change everything. It's always a struggle. This seems to be particularly true of England, where the original street names could be particularly descriptive of what went on there, in a very raw and crude sense. Today, those names add character, and higher valuations. Lane tops Boulevard in sales pricing, and embarrassing names can cause sales to take forever. I for one have long joked I could never live at the corner of Tinker Bell Boulevard and Goofy Gulch in a Disney development. On the other hand, living at Mortgage Heights and Default Drive is no privilege either.

For the near future, companies like Google and what3words are creating global systems that computers (of course) generate. What3words, for example, has divided the planet into three-metre (10 ft) squares, each labeled by three common words. Look up a three word combo on its website, and the map function takes you to a very specific spot that needs no further description. Sadly, it is in English, which does not work for everyone . So the company is developing other language systems, and you will have to know what language the three word are in and choose that subsystem in order for it to work. Google is doing the same thing with a seven digit code that is most unmemorable. Unlike The Address Book, which is a delight, it kinda takes the romance and character out of it.

David Wineberg