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Title: Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life by Tom Lewis ISBN: 0-14-026771-9 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A "lobby" without the name
Comment: For me, one of the interesting things in this very interesting book is how Lewis describes the development of the "highway lobby," under the aegis of the Federal Bureau of Roads, without ever (I believe) calling it a lobby. This is certainly not the main focus of the book, but Lewis makes it clear that the highway system would not have been developed without the efforts of the highway lobby.
Rating: 4
Summary: Informative, with too much opinion
Comment: Mr. Lewis offers an insightful view to the history of the interstate system in the United States. While the first half of the book is a wonderfully interesting read, I think that the second half of the book becomes bogged down with too much of Lewis's opinion. I agree with his point that the interstate has changed the state of America for the worse; however, his argument would be better served by a factual analysis from which the reader could draw his or her own conclusions, rather than trying to lead us down the path to highway hatred.
Rating: 3
Summary: A CHRONICLE OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Comment: The Interstate Highway System forever changed American culture, but the engineers who build it were not thinking about that. They were concentrating on accomplishing the biggest building project in the history of the US. Lewis' book is a chronicle of what they built and how it affected the way we live today. In the pages of his book, we meet some of the people who made it happen. They built huge cloverleaf intersections, mighty elevated freeways, and blasted through mountains to join the east coast with the west coast, north with south.
The book is interesting reading, but goes off in too many directions, giving only a taste of the social changes wrought by the system and the citizen efforts in urban areas like New Orleans and San Francisco to stop ugly highways. The most surprising thing to me was the miscalculation by the highway designers of the social effects. They somehow thought expressways would bring people INTO cities, not thinking that these massive concrete strips would devastate neighborhoods and make it easier for people to live in the suburbs. Gradually, a nation began to learn that highways are not the answer to all our transportation problems.
In my own city -- Detroit -- the building of I-75 tore apart a thriving Hispanic neighborhood in the city, and out in the inner ring suburbs (where I live), a connecting freeway (I-696) was held up for ten years as the tiny municipality of Pleasant Ridge protested the gutting of its small area. In the end, they lost and the highway was built. Today there is a "sound barriar" wall along the freeway, which is down in a ditch, but the constant hum and buzz of the traffic is a steady background noise for the lovely homes that are adjacent to it. Pleasant Ridge is not quite as pleasant as it used to be.
It is good to look to the past to avoid repeating costly mistakes, Yes, we need the Interstate Highway System, and we can honor the memory of President Eisenhower who initiated this ambitious and far-reaching program to bring to America "better roads." The engineering accomplishments are stupendous. I personally watched as I-696 was built and marveled how the engineers tunneled under busy Woodward Avenue and never had to close it down; they built the freeway with little disruption of traffic and I remember the day it opened. It was immediately full of traffic, becoming part of an eventual beltway that will ring Detroit, much like Atlanta and Cinncinati have beltways. I am familiar with those because my family has made many trips down I-75 to Florida. How amazing it is to take one road that passes a few miles from my home in Michigan and just stay on that road all the way to the Sunshine State! I think Tom Lewis admirally captures the mixed feelings we all have about these interstates. Ugly and divisive, yes! Engineering marvels that let us travel safely at high speeds over long distances? You bet!
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Title: The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States by William Kaszynski ISBN: 0786408227 Publisher: McFarland & Company Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century by Stephen B. Goddard ISBN: 0226300439 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: American Road: The Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey at the Dawn of the Motor Age by Pete Davies ISBN: 080506883X Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 03 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Suburban Nation : The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck ISBN: 0865476063 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 16 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989 by Mark H. Rose ISBN: 0870496719 Publisher: Univ of Tennessee Pr Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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