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|  | |  | | | The Works: Anatomy of a City | | | | | SKU:
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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Read Kate Ascher's posts on the Penguin Blog.
A fascinating guided tour of the ways things work in a modern city
Have you ever wondered how the water in your faucet gets there? Where your garbage goes? What the pipes under city streets do? How bananas from Ecuador get to your local market? Why radiators in apartment buildings clang? Using New York City as its point of reference, The Works takes readers down manholes and behind the scenes to explain exactly how an urban infrastructure operates. Deftly weaving text and graphics, author Kate Ascher explores the systems that manage water, traffic, sewage and garbage, subways, electricity, mail, and much more. Full of fascinating facts and anecdotes, The Works gives readers a unique glimpse at what lies behind and beneath urban life in the twenty-first century.
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Kate Ascher | | Paperback: | 240 pages | | Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) | | Publication Date: | November 27, 2007 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0143112708 | | Product Length: | 10.78 inches | | Product Width: | 8.46 inches | | Product Height: | 0.6 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.92 pounds | | Package Length: | 10.8 inches | | Package Width: | 8.4 inches | | Package Height: | 0.6 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.8 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 34 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 34 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 49 found the following review helpful:
 Fantastic work Jan 11, 2006
By I should be at the gym
Imagine:
*an illustration of the special machinery used just to clean the ceiling of the Holland Tunnel.
*a sidebar on the "Poo-Poo Choo-Choo" that for years transported waste 2,000 miles (!) from NYC to a dump in Texas.
*a graphic showing payphone distribution density in all 5 boroughs.
*a drawing of the simple but effective interlocking bolts and cross-tie latching that keep the corrugated metal containers on barges connected to each other so upper containers don't slide off lower ones and fall into the water.
*a key to reading construction markings that crews spray paint on the streets.
Such drawings, historical tidbits, and facts are more abundant in this book than leaves in Central Park.
This book is exceptional. As the former Vice-chair of Manhattan Community Board 5 (greater midtown Manhattan), chair of its parks committee, and member of its land use and zoning committee, I can attest to the great value of Kate Ascher's remarkable accomplishment, "The Works." New York City's infrastructure--from garbage collection to traffic control; subway signaling to cable TV distribution among franchise-controlled territories--is one of the world's most multifaceted, and at times a curious mix of the high-tech and the antiquated.
Reviews suggesting that the text is for teenagers may be accidentally misleading. "The Works" by no means is for teenagers either *primarily* or *at the exclusion of* adults. Yes, the book--especially its more heavily-illustrated sections--will no doubt fire the imagination of many teens who have engineering, design, line drawing, architectural, historical analysis, or problem-solving aptitudes. (Have a teenager who loved Legos as a kid but has outgrown them? This book will probably make a good gift.) Just because the book is broad in scope and doesn't examine each urban work it covers with the detail of a textbook for electrical engineering students at M.I.T. doesn't make it merely for adolescents.
If you enjoy TV shows on The Science Channel or Discovery, shows like "Building the Ultimate," if you are a history trivia buff, if you just like looking at diagrams or line drawings of machinery and equipment, of you're fascinated by cities, or if it is simply the cast that you love New York City, this is a great book, and I highly recommend it.
16 of 16 found the following review helpful:
learn how it all works--with diagrams! Jan 10, 2006
By R. Larsen
This book has not left the coffee table. Everyone who has come over picks it up and inevitably remarks, "Oh, so that's how it works! I always wondered how they timed the traffic lights" or some such comment. This is a book you can return to again and again--one day it's telecommunications, the next, sewage. It contains so many answers to questions you never knew you had.
After reading "The Works," I now walk around New York with a completely different awareness of the incredible infrastructure that quietly undergirds the city: I constantly notice the design of fire hydrants, street signs, and man holes; I know what a "sidewalk neckdown" is; I understand how my water gets to me from the Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskills through those crazy aqueducts (and they ARE crazy! they have a submersible submarine that perouses that thing for leaks!).
This book is a perfect gift for any man/boy/girl/hippo who likes to know how things work and likes to see them diagrammed in beautiful, scrumptious illustrations. I am one of these people.
But perhaps most importantly, this book made me forgive those terrible yellow trash trains that pull into subway stations late at night and immediately mean you will be waiting twenty more minutes for your train. I used to fear them. Now I know what they do. I forgive you, yellow trash trains.
12 of 13 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Reference - Incredible Graphics Jan 11, 2006
By Louis A. Rodriguez
I am a licensed professional civil engineer that worked for the Philadelphia Water Department for 10 years and I found this book to be an excellent piece of work. This book would be a great reference for anyone ranging from a high school student to an engineer/architech/planner. The book focuses on New York City so people from the northeast USA may find some of the topics hit close to home. However, the principles and diagrams in the book apply to most cities. One of the best book I've bought in a while!
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Visually well done & detailed Dec 28, 2005
By andrew lynch
As a designer in NYC I really appreciated the detailed and accurate illustrations. Very well done & I think the book has enough information to be able to come back to it multiple times and come away with something new. I would take issue with the idea that its for a child/teenager. Visually it can spark a lot of ideas that can become useful. Now that I think about it, it reminds me of when I was a kid reading and staring at the illustrations from the Richard Scary book series.
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Like a pop-up book for grownups Dec 21, 2005
By Dennis R. Mitton
"tolstoy"
I worked in commercial power for several years and until I read this book I still didn't know how electricity got from the power plant to the outlet in my shop to power my drill. Or why water actually comes out of the tap when I turn on the sink faucet. It's these myriads of questions that we take for granted that this book answers. Imagine these questions in reference to a city - New York City - and you've got a fascinating book..
The book covers every phase of public works including transit, power, communications, and clean-up. While the focus is on massive public works it's not just a book about technology but it personalizes the people who do all these jobs such as the engineers who climb the antennas on the Empire State Building for maintenance. The graphics are excellent and are a real aid in understanding how the systems work. The writing is clear and concise and very readable. After reading the book I have a new respect for the people who keep this largely invisible infrastructure running. Good reading.
See all 34 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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