Customer Reviews

On the Grid: A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, I must confess that I am an infrastructure geek. Although I am a liberal arts type, I am fascinated by the interaction of the many engineering systems that allow modern life to run as smoothly as it does. So it was with great pleasure that I ordered "On the Grid". I am a sucker for a book that traces infrastructure from the author's house to its point of origin.

Although clearly written and earnestly told, "On The Grid" is not the mesmerizing and often hilarious book which the back page claims. What Scott Huler did not understand is that general readers are not interested in his personal journey to understand the systems that make the modern world work. What's fascinating is the systems themselves. It boggles my mind how Huler thought he could tell this story without a single photo or illustration. It is like writing art history without including a single image of a painting. It is possible to do but it strikes me as pointless.

If you are new to the study of infrastructure, I would recommend Brian Hayes' "Infrastructure-A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape" or Kate Ascher's "The Works: Anatomy of a City" as a starting point. These book do a great job of explaining how hidden infrastructure works. They are filled with beautiful pictures and illustrations which help make complicated systems easy to understand for the general reader. In the end, I think it always better to show how infrastructure works rather than describe one's personal relationship to it.

The premise of this book intrigued me because I'm always fascinated by the systems that we as a society usually take for granted. When I got this book, I eagerly delved into its pages to be rewarded with a cool introduction. The author talks about his city of Raleigh, NC and how a recent drought spurred the government to outlaw garbage disposals. The author then talks about how detrimental disposals are (which I always suspected but it's nice to get confirmation) and the rest of the book is set up.

However the rest of the book is sadly nowhere as interesting as the introduction. The author focuses on giving us a highly detailed picture of Raleigh's infrastructure and while that can be interesting, I couldn't help but repeatedly ask, "what about my city? and the rest of the world?" Huler does mention how certain systems vary throughout the world, and throughout history but I couldn't help but get sick of the heavy emphasis on Raleigh. Also, Huler gives much detail that I simply was not interested in, such as the background of one of his city workers, or how he went about contacting the Survey people, how he found out this interesting tidbit about Raleigh. I found myself really trudging through the book to finish it. Yes, there were plenty of gems of knowledge dispersed throughout but I felt like I had to work to get them.

An informative book, especially for those living in Raleigh however be warned that there are many boring and uninformative parts as well.

While I can't vouch for the rest of the book, when I read an introduction and find "A mid tangle of wires" for "Amid," on page three, on page seven a stray half-sentence stuffed sideways into a paragraph by a careless cut and paste: "But you didn't need to wait for the garbage disposal debate if you wanted to hear about infrastructure. The March 29, 2008 City & State section of the Raleigh News & Observer had five stories on its front page, of which four dealt with infrastructure issues: one about the difficulty of crossing one of Raleigh's main streets but you didn't need to want for the garbage disposal debate if you wanted to been about infrastructure without getting killed; one about ......"

"didn't need to want..."? "been about infrastructure..."? Huh?

And another non-sentence "Rolled stormwater off my yard in two directions and went...somewhere, by some mysterious means; what might happen if I waited for a rain and followed it?" (page 9).

Is this Enlgihs [sic] or English?

It annoys me.

And I also paid full price for this book, tragically. And when I pay full price, I expect full sentences. And grammar. And proofreading.

Who edited this?

I work for my local city and thought I would pick this up to learn more about what other departments in my city do. I loved it!! I learned a lot of the things that just happen without giving any thought or appreciation to it (ie, turning on the faucet or what happens AFTER you flush the toilet). I enjoyed the voice of Scott Huler and could not put this book down as soon as I started reading it.

Also, since I'm getting into writing, I have found this helpful in world building, especially since Scott doesn't just tell us how his city handles things but gives a history dating back thousands of years on how they used to do things and how they have evolved. He really covered things that I had never considered before and, again, really gave me an appreciation into what goes into building a city. Turns out it is nothing like Sim City!!

I think people will learn something new if you pick this up, even though it might be a little trivial. If anything, it will give you a deeper appreciation for the things that local government does. I've gained an even more deeper understanding and appreciation for those I work with.

I am a confessed junkie of all things tech and infrastructure. I am fascinated and curious about everything around me and I jumped at the opportunity to read On The Grid a few weeks before it was published. Some of the other reviewers complain that the author focuses too much on where he lives (Raleigh, North Carolina) and that the book is too personal (he writes about *his* journey). In my opinion that's not really a valid complaint. Cities have different histories and different infrastructures and part of that is based on the natural forces and challenges that each city has to contend with. In writing about where he lives, Scott Huler makes it clear that each one of us can embark on the same kind of journey by becoming more aware of the infrastructure that we depend on and what makes it unique and different in our cities.

"On the Grid" gets off to a strong start by covering surveying, water distribution and water treatment. Things start to go downhill from there as the systems he tries to describe become more and more complex. He truly doesn't do justice to electrical power generation and distribution and he glosses over natural gas distribution (he couldn't get full access from the utilities because of post-9/11 security concerns). By the time telephone, networks and the internet are broached the author's treatment is generic and uninspired. I read almost the entire book and decided (with 20 or 30 pages to go) that I had better things to do with my time.

And what did I do? I went out to look at the power and telephone cables that cover the skies and "Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars".

This morning I woke up early to get some quality time on the internet only to find out it wasn't working. That seems to be happening more and more to us in our household, requiring us to re-boot our LAN/router doo-hickey and hope it starts working again. But while I waited, I went ahead and finished up the reading of Scott Huler's "On the Grid."

I think of myself as a pretty average suburban home owner who takes the city's infrastructure for granted. I assume that when I turn on the water faucet, fresh, clean water will come out, and I assume that when I put something down the garbage disposal, it will get chopped up into tiny pieces and go whereever it is that it goes and all will be well in the world. I don't really understand how these systems work, but, unlike most folks, perhaps, I have at least been curious. So when I got the chance to review this book, I was only too happy to give it a crack.

Mr Huler lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and uses his house and city as launching pads to discover how our central infrastructure systems really work. He takes us through such systems as storm water drains, sewage systems, the power grids, transportation systems, and communications systems (including the internet). He follows one element of the infrastructure back to its source or destination. Along the way he talks with experts in that system such as engineers, sanitation experts, gas company employees, etc. If nothing else, this book certainly shines the light on the critical roles these people play in all of our lives. But he doesn't stop there. Each chapter also goes into detail on the history of each of the systems, beginning at its source whether it was ancient Rome, prehistoric man, or Benjamin Franklin. The author does a good job at tying it all together and I did come away from this book with a greater understanding of what all of those poles, iron plates, and utility boxes in my neighborhood are really for. But really, the book just scratches the surface. It does demonstrate just how massively complex our infrastructure is and there is no way somebody can get a thorough understanding of these systems from one book. My only negative comment is that the cover states the book is "mesmerizing and often hilarious." It was interesting, but hardly "mesmerizing" and I found very little of it to be mildly humorous, much less "hilarious." This is more of a straight informational book, not a Dave Barry collection of essays.

And I still don't understand how my internet/router doo-hickey system really works...

Having worked in critical infrastructure protection for years, "On The Grid" was a wonderful treat. It's essentially a physiology course for a neighborhood -- how everything works, where everything comes from and where everything goes. While I'm a resident of Raleigh, it's not really a book about a particular town. It's a critical analysis of the economic, political, jurisdictional, bureaucratic and technical factors that physically connect us to our communities.

Still larger, "On the Grid " provides a perspective of the challenges we face in our own nation and beyond. Since the book was written and the world population spiraled to 7 billion, how will we provide all those connections to that many people? How are basic services defined in each culture, and what is our capacity to deliver them?

What started out as curiosity for that world beneath our feet for the author, turned into a journey exploring what it takes to provide us all the things we simply can turn on and off, and expect things to happen, appear, and disappear.

Conversely, in thinking about these global issues, it's also important to think local. Like charity, the "systems that make our world work" start at home. It's an adventure you won't want to miss, and I highly recommend "On The Grid." Hope you enjoy it as much as I did -- and it piques your curiosity for what lies below as well.

I cannot believe this book was edited by anything beyond SpellChecker 1.0 - I'm reading and re-reading sentences only to find out that - yes - they do not make any sense. Major grammatical errors and spelling errors right from the introduction pages and routinely throughout.

Book is also very simple with more attention paid to subtle humor attempts than to the meat of the chapters.

I couldn't wait to finish it to move on to something more satisfying to read.

Well, if infrastructure is not your interest, you may enjoy this one-man's journey thru infrastruture ~ I enjoyed this book only so-so, it was interesting and informative, but I found it only average. When I saw the title, I was expecting some more thorough information on our infrastructure, and found this book to not quite deliver on that promise. I have found more complete infrastructure books out there: I did, however, appreciate the fact that the author was trying to trace and point out the many systems we hardly ever give a second thought, that makes the world go round and our worlds run smooth.

On The Grid starts with the author's experience with a drought and subsequent water restrictions which lead him to wonder exactly how that water that is now so precious gets into his faucet in the first place.
Follow the author as he embarks on a local adventure filled with fascinating insight into our country's outmoded, deteriorating infastructure. If you don't know a thing about infastructure, this book is a great and very interesting introduciton!