Interested In The Infrastructure That Supports Your Basic Needs?

The author divides his book into five parts: Water, Transportation, Energy, and Communication Infrastructure. Today, all of these are ubiquitous. The only time I think about them is when I am sitting in a parking lot on the freeway or my house is part of a rolling blackout. When I read the teaser for this book, I realized that I could learn the origin of these infrastructures and how they evolved. Learn where they have been implemented the best to date and where they have not. Most important for any potential reader, this book is written at a non-technical level.

The author has not provided cursory overviews. For example, the first part describes infrastructure that collects, processes, delivers, collects excess and used, processes, and releases water back into the environment. The author uses Rome as the first city that needed to import water to quench the thirst of a burgeoning population. The Romans in the 4th century BCE built their first aqueduct. It was 10.5 miles long. Water flows downhill. The change in height between the source and Rome was 38 feet. That means the slope was less than a tenth of a degree. A remarkable feat of engineering by those ancient Romans is just the first instance in this book, which is chock-full of intriguing examples. Since fresh water isn’t available everywhere, the next chapter deals with technologies to purify water. The next chapter deals with how to distribute the water to the population even when they live at very divergent elevations. Once the water is used, it must be collected, including any rainfall. Rome’s solution was simple. The water was all channeled in underground sewers and flowed into the Tiber. Offloading your waste to your neighbors is not a viable solution for long. The next two chapters cover this topic. These systems generally have to handle the normal level of sewage and an occasional large quantity of stormwater. If these systems do not work, the effects are immediate and serious.

As the first chapter uses Rome, each chapter uses a different location to illustrate the principles. In many of the locations, he has lived for some time. He provides little vignettes on the cities with places to eat. This aspect tends to add the right amount of lightness to make the reading easier while he explains the technology and how it works in that city. These vignettes are separated from the text in a box and a different color, which makes it easy to differentiate from the regular text.

One piece of information brought a smile to my face. I learned something that I did not know and would, if asked, confidently give the wrong answer. The author calls Saint-Pierre and Miquelon home. It is a small island south of Newfoundland. It is not Canadian territory but France.

This book is the first that I have read by this author. I found the book was easy to read, very informative, and not too technical. My understanding of the complexity of the infrastructure that supports our lives was significantly improved. I highly recommend reading this book. I rate it with five stars.

I received the free, pre-publication e-book version of this novel from Prometheus Books, an imprint of The Globe Pequot Publishing Group, through NetGalley. My review is based solely on my own reading experience. Thank you, Prometheus Books, for the opportunity to read and review this book.

‘The infrastructure book’ was a non-fiction book abut cities, how they are developed and formed. It was an incredibly interesting novel about a topic that intrigues me as someone who lived in the country and moved into the city. It was a very ‘structural’ 😉 novel but at times lacked a gripping nature to the style of writing. This book was one that I had to read in chunks and could struggle through content heavy chapters. I really recommend for anyone doing research on cities.

3.5 stars

Thank you to #netgalley for this review advanced copy.

Tons of content, but still manageable and memorable. Taking on all the major infrastructure systems in all cities is a lot, but I am better equipped to think about what powers the places I go to. The reliance on case studies was what this book work. I think this was adapted from a textbook that Derrible wrote, which explains a lot but also makes it a lot more impressive. I like how he talked a little bit about his background without spending too long on it, and then ended with talking about his hometown, which was a lovely way to tie everything up.

This was a fascinating overview of the infrastructure that silently keeps a city running. I enjoyed learning about different systems for obtaining energy, transferring information, and controlling waste and water runoff. The book is short and easy to read, with lots of footnotes that expound on the information and put it into context. It was perfect for a reader like me who is not directly involved with the decision-making in my city, just curious about how it all works and if there are things I could do, personally, to help it run more smoothly.

I received a free Advanced Reader's Copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, NetGalley for providing the ARC of the book.

Overall, I thought the book was interesting but it ultimately failed to be entertaining and engaging.

The good: the author clearly knows their stuff: all the technologies were explained well and made accessible to those of us with no knowledge about infrastructure.

The bad: as the tagline above states, it was just a bit boring. I liked that the author picked a city to illustrate a point but I felt like that example could have been done in a more engaging way. I also wanted to understand why and how this affects me (and others) in a profound way. In other words, how does infrastructure shapes our social world. There some indications of this but the author mostly spent time explaining how our water is cleaned.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like this one more than I did, and although the topic of infrastructure in general was interesting, well-researched, and nicely summarized, I think I have two main quips with this book.

Mainly I think it is just wayyyyy too much content for one book. I can really appreciate that the author wanted to cover all aspects of infrastructure in one go, and they really tried to organize it in a thoughtful way. I just kept getting lost and wishing things were explained a bit more slowly or with more detail because there is just so much information to take in here.

(And I just don't like the author's voice, sorry. He sprinkles in too much autobiographical information for me, and rather than making it feel more personal it kept annoying me.)

Overall however I really liked the choice to introduce the various infrastructures by giving a specific city as an example each time, as I feel like I got to know the city a bit (as in travel writing), and the technologies discussed will make you think about how cities and society function more than you probably have thought about it before.

A really fascinating book for anyone who is interested in history and infrastructure. I learned so much reading this book and I think it's a great book for the (budding or otherwise) researcher and / or engineer in your life.