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The Way to Go: Moving by Sea, Land, and Air
"Is it possibly to write a stunning book about infrastructure? Kate Ascher’s books are bliss... Using gorgeous graphics and clear, simple, language, Ascher explains the infrastructure and engineering marvels around us." --Slate.com
In our digital age, it’s easy to forget that almost everything we enjoy about modern life depends on motion. We ride in cars and on buses and trains to work; enjoy food shipped over oceans; fly high in the sky to any point on the planet. Over the last century, the world has come to rely on its ability to move just about anywhere effortlessly. But what prompted this transformation? What inventions allowed it to happen? And how do the vehicles and systems that keep us in motion today—airports, trains, cars, and satellites—really work?
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Exploring our incredible interconnected world is the task of Kate Ascher’s The Way to Moving by Sea, Land, and Air . Lusciously illustrated and meticulously researched, The Way to Go reveals the highly complex and largely invisible network of global transportation. How is cargo moved from inland factory to seaside port, and how is it transferred from shore to ship? How do ships and planes navigate their routes without landmarks? What happens under the hood of a car or in the undercarriage of a people mover? How did planes become cheaper than ships or trains? Why are some spaceships reusable and others not? What tools are needed to build today’s immense bridges and tunnels, and what ensures they don’t collapse? How does a helicopter really stay aloft? What happens when lightning strikes an airplane or when one satellite crashes with another? What will the car of tomorrow look like?
Focusing on the machines that underpin our lives, Ascher’s The Way to Go also introduces the systems that keep those machines in business—the emergency communication networks that connect ships at sea, the automated tolling mechanisms that maintain the flow of highway traffic, the air control network that keeps planes from colliding in the sky. Equally fascinating are the technologies behind these complex baggage tag readers that make sure people’s bags go where they need to; automated streetlights that adjust their timing based on traffic flow; GPS devices that pinpoint where we are on earth at any second. Together these technologies move more people farther, faster, and more cheaply than at any other time in history.
As our lives and our businesses become more entwined with others across the globe, there has never been a better time to understand how transportation works. Indispensable and unforgettable, Kate Ascher’s The Way to Go is a gorgeous graphic guide to a world moving as never before.
In our digital age, it’s easy to forget that almost everything we enjoy about modern life depends on motion. We ride in cars and on buses and trains to work; enjoy food shipped over oceans; fly high in the sky to any point on the planet. Over the last century, the world has come to rely on its ability to move just about anywhere effortlessly. But what prompted this transformation? What inventions allowed it to happen? And how do the vehicles and systems that keep us in motion today—airports, trains, cars, and satellites—really work?
Ìý
Exploring our incredible interconnected world is the task of Kate Ascher’s The Way to Moving by Sea, Land, and Air . Lusciously illustrated and meticulously researched, The Way to Go reveals the highly complex and largely invisible network of global transportation. How is cargo moved from inland factory to seaside port, and how is it transferred from shore to ship? How do ships and planes navigate their routes without landmarks? What happens under the hood of a car or in the undercarriage of a people mover? How did planes become cheaper than ships or trains? Why are some spaceships reusable and others not? What tools are needed to build today’s immense bridges and tunnels, and what ensures they don’t collapse? How does a helicopter really stay aloft? What happens when lightning strikes an airplane or when one satellite crashes with another? What will the car of tomorrow look like?
Focusing on the machines that underpin our lives, Ascher’s The Way to Go also introduces the systems that keep those machines in business—the emergency communication networks that connect ships at sea, the automated tolling mechanisms that maintain the flow of highway traffic, the air control network that keeps planes from colliding in the sky. Equally fascinating are the technologies behind these complex baggage tag readers that make sure people’s bags go where they need to; automated streetlights that adjust their timing based on traffic flow; GPS devices that pinpoint where we are on earth at any second. Together these technologies move more people farther, faster, and more cheaply than at any other time in history.
As our lives and our businesses become more entwined with others across the globe, there has never been a better time to understand how transportation works. Indispensable and unforgettable, Kate Ascher’s The Way to Go is a gorgeous graphic guide to a world moving as never before.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published March 20, 2014
5 people are currently reading
474 people want to read
About the author
Kate Ascher
5Ìýbooks42ÌýfollowersKate Ascher is an author and was executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Her 2005 book, The Works: Anatomy of a City, a textual and graphic exploration of how the complicated and often overlapping infrastructure of a modern city works, garnered wide discussion and praise when it was published. She left the NYCEDC in 2007 for Vornado Realty Trust. She formerly held positions with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and in corporate finance.
Ascher received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in government from the London School of Economics and her B.A. in political science from Brown University.
(from Wikipedia)
Ascher received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in government from the London School of Economics and her B.A. in political science from Brown University.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 25, 2024
Longtime readers here know that I love reading about transportation, and not just Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Ships, horses, bicycles � if it moves, I’ll follow and read books about it happily. A few years ago I delighted in the visual feast that was Kate Ascher’s The Works: Anatomy of a City. She’s also done books on skyscrapers and transportation, so I obviously had to check out The Way to Go. Like The Works, visuals are a core part of the text, as Ascher uses pictures to communicate how these great machines work, in addition to how they look. Such pictures also illustrate the functioning of support systems, like canal locks or the GPS network that helps airplanes and ships get a fix on their location, or bridge design and gas station operations for cars. Ascher works in examples from across the globe, though presumably there’s an American bias to visual and technical illustrations: the commercial truck shown, for instance, is a conventional hooded truck popular in North America and not the cabover kind that dominates worldwide. The color-coded illustration of an automobile indicating different subsystems was especially useful. This is not a picture book, though: instead, text and visuals work together. Ascher explores all aspects of what makes transportation work � the design of roads and rails, equipment like signals, rudders, and ailerons, and larger systems like the design of airfields and the establishment of national air traffic control networks to mitigate accidents. I especially like the section on airfield design, and the illustration of the various tender vehicles that evacuate waste, baggage, etc from airplanes upon landing. The past is not forgotten, either: Ascher often demonstrates the history of a particular microsubject, like the evolution of traffic signals. This is the kind of book that curious minds of all ages could savor, because Ascher avoids being both too simplistic or technical in her explanations. Shipping gets the lion’s share of the book, which is no surprise given that it’s been the lifeblood of economies and power for most of written history: air (space included) and ground transport share the second half of the book, along with a section on The Future, while ships and ship-support systems dominate the first half. Tragically, nary a mention is made of bicycles. I’ve read books all over the transportation field, from histories of shipping containers to the sociology of truck drivers, and even I learned a few things from this on the infrastructure and cultural sides: I didn’t know, for instance, that the peace sign comes from the semaphore alphabet, though I did associate it with a symbol for nuclear disarmament in some fuzzy way. I enjoyed this enormously, even with the appalling oversight of missing bike infrastructure.
August 25, 2020
Filled with tons of detailed infographics! Learn about the ingenious solutions developed to build transport infrastructure across the world. This handy reference examines the evolution, from days down to minutes, of how we have gone about getting from A to B and the future of exploration.
Herman - The Book Grocer
October 26, 2020
I liked this book! I have no idea who the intended audience is, since it doesn’t go too deep, but is also not a kid’s book since it uses dense language closer to a textbook. The infographics were delightful and I picked up a bunch of fun facts. What more could you ask for in a book like this? It reminded me a lot of the book, “The Way Things Work� which I grew up with and re-read many times over the years. Will add this to that shelf!
August 12, 2018
Transportation isn't Ascher's area of expertise, and it shows. Unlike the better earlier work The Works by the same author, the subject matter here is too diverse, and the explanations too simplistic. Illustrations look like they were subcontracted from wikiHow.
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February 27, 2022The Way To Go by Kate Ascher covers the three main ways humans travel. It’s as the subtitle puts it, Moving by Land, Sea and Air. It’s not a deep dive into every topic. Instead, it shortly delves into finer details that we may not think about (like how train tracks are laid, or maintenance of ships in a dry dock). I liked that it’s a nice general over view of travel.
I mainly picked up the Way To Go as some leisure reading. I did feel there were a couple of parts that got repetitive; especially since certain areas naturally overlap. They were often named in one paragraph, and then further explained in another nearby, or on a different page with a closely related topic. With that being said, I did enjoy it a lot. There were illustrations on every page. And, like many books I’ve read, technical terms are given a definition. Definitions of which could be found in the text that accompanied illustrations and photographs. Next, I love how the chapters are broken down into specific areas. For example within Sea is Life at Sea, Navigation, and Closer to Shore. This brings me to my next favorite. A single topic or closely related ones within the sections were contained in one page and/or a two page spread.
The Way To Go is not an end all, definite, or technical book. And, I think it does what Ascher set out to do well. So, overall I enjoyed it a lot. I recommend checking it out if it sounds interesting to you, or if you want to simply discover the broad details of traveling.
This review also appears on my blog
I mainly picked up the Way To Go as some leisure reading. I did feel there were a couple of parts that got repetitive; especially since certain areas naturally overlap. They were often named in one paragraph, and then further explained in another nearby, or on a different page with a closely related topic. With that being said, I did enjoy it a lot. There were illustrations on every page. And, like many books I’ve read, technical terms are given a definition. Definitions of which could be found in the text that accompanied illustrations and photographs. Next, I love how the chapters are broken down into specific areas. For example within Sea is Life at Sea, Navigation, and Closer to Shore. This brings me to my next favorite. A single topic or closely related ones within the sections were contained in one page and/or a two page spread.
The Way To Go is not an end all, definite, or technical book. And, I think it does what Ascher set out to do well. So, overall I enjoyed it a lot. I recommend checking it out if it sounds interesting to you, or if you want to simply discover the broad details of traveling.
This review also appears on my blog
May 12, 2014
I won this book through the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.com giveaway. I love the concept of the book and the illustrations were good. I did find that the back of the book index had errors and many important terms were not even listed in the index (ex. Jughandle and Michigan Left was listed but Intersections and Windmill were not). I was also disappointed that this book was printed in China, the pages had a chemical scent making it hard to read for very long. This would be a good reference source for a school library.
February 29, 2016
I enjoyed how I depth this book was although the tone of voice was a bit odd. It felt like it was geared towards young kids but it wasn't written with that audience in mind due to general page layout and wording among other things. As an adult reading this book there were parts and concepts that made me feel stupid for not knowing about them. I was a bit disappointed in the aviation section - the near lack of general aviation was a bummer and deserved a page spread if not two page spreads.
August 13, 2016
The author sent a retail version of this book in Hardcover for winning, that was GREAT to begin with. The book explains the different means of transportation and how they originated and developed over time. Very informative and well written. Would like to see more books by this author.
July 15, 2014
I enjoyed it, up to a point, but I discovered once again that I am not super interested in transport. The pictures are wonderful though!
November 14, 2014
Very thorough book, and the infographics are beautiful! If you like transportation things, highly recommended.
May 28, 2014
What a fun 'how things work' book for adults! Who knew infrastructure could be so enjoyable.
June 7, 2014
Thoroughly entertains AND is educational!
October 10, 2014
Very good Book. An informative and detailed description of all forms of transportation. If you want to know how a road is made or how a ship works this is the book for you.
September 22, 2014
Love these kinds of books. Just a coffee table book, but awesome to just thumb through.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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