A thoroughly researched, if sometimes-daunting, technical survey.
A lawyer’s case for the centrality of infrastructure to the future of the United States.
As an attorney who specializes in construction defects and litigation against contractors and designers, Gravely is intimately familiar with the poor state of American infrastructure, which includes roads, buildings, electrical grids, sewage systems, and much more. In this, his debut book, he describes in painstaking detail how “our most essential resources have reached the end of their operable life” and are “failing without warning” at an increasingly alarming rate. Moreover, much of our infrastructure, built during the post–World War II economic boom, has failed to keep up with technological innovations, threatening the nation’s economy and security. The book’s first section provides a historical overview of the centrality of infrastructure to the health of civilizations. Investment in infrastructure is the common thread that connects ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to 20th-century Western superpowers, the author notes. Beyond meeting the pragmatic needs of governments and their citizens, infrastructure inspires and even “defines us,” Gravely asserts, as projects such as the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building, and the Erie Canal have become part of the nation’s identity. However, as the book’s second section details—with an unnerving number of specific examples—the country’s “cheap” and “fast” approach to infrastructure has led to “busted & rusted” bridges, overloaded and eroded dams and waterway locks, unhealthy drinking water, and shoddily constructed, uninspiring public schools and other buildings. After highlighting this near-dystopian state of affairs, the book’s final section looks at potential solutions.
Eschewing a partisan approach to infrastructure, the book blames both Republicans and Democrats at various points for failures to address problems head-on. The author dismisses China’s authoritarian approach to infrastructure projects—such as forcing people off of their land—but does discuss “what we can learn” from the country’s massive investments, which have created architectural wonders. The book is careful to emphasize that natural resources are also part of infrastructure and thus should be protected from unscrupulous development and extraction. The private sector, including Elon Musk’s vision of Starbase, Texas, is heralded as a viable path to innovative development that could bypass congressional stalemates in Washington. Overall, the book is written in the approachable, savvy language of a seasoned lawyer, expertly balancing readability with technical discussions of building and construction codes. With more than 1,000 footnotes, this well-researched book effectively makes its case by inundating readers with numerous examples of old, decrepit, or cheaply built infrastructure networks. It’s an engaging read, to be sure. However, it attempts to do more than a single book comfortably can, as it attempts not only to document America’s failed infrastructure, but also to provide readers with a narrative of infrastructure development throughout history as well as policy ideas for the future. Although each part stands well on its own, the three sections combined may overwhelm readers. Still, the book more than succeeds in making its argument that “the future of America depends on the decisions we make today.”
A thoroughly researched, if sometimes-daunting, technical survey.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Sutton Hart Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.
The Top Chef host describes her journey to new heights.
For those who don’t know, Kish is a “gay Korean adopted woman, born in Seoul, raised in Michigan” and “a chef, a character, a host, and a cultural communicator—as well as a human being with a beating heart.” Though this book covers every step of her journey, every restaurant job and television role, and also discusses her experience as an adoptee (very positive) and a queer woman (late bloomer), the storytelling is so straightforward, lacking in suspense, character development, or dialogue, that it is basically a long version of its (longish) “About the Author.” Seemingly dramatic situations are not dramatized—when she was eliminated on her first Top Chef run, she assures us that she did the best she could, and drops it. “I can spare you the gory details (bouillabaisse and big personalities were involved).” Later, she cites a belief in protecting the privacy of others to omit the story of her first relationship with a woman. With no character development, neither does the reader get to know those who fall outside the privacy zone, like her best friend, Steph, and her wife, Bianca. When she gets mad, she says things like, “It’s a gross understatement to say I was crushed, beyond frustrated, and furious with the situation.” The fact that “I’ve never been a big reader” does not come as a surprise. It is more surprising when she confesses that “I believe the universe is selective about the moments in which it introduces life-changing prospects.”
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780316580915
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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