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Phillip F. Schewe

The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World Paperback – March 20, 2007

by Phillip F. Schewe (Author)

3.7 51 ratings

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The electrical grid goes everywhere-it's the largest and most complex machine ever made. Yet the system is built in such a way that the bigger it gets, the more inevitable its collapse.

Named the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering, the electrical grid is the largest industrial investment in the history of humankind. It reaches into your home, snakes its way to your bedroom, and climbs right up into the lamp next to your pillow. At times, it almost seems alive, like some enormous circulatory system that pumps life to big cities and the most remote rural areas.

Constructed of intricately interdependent components, the grid operates on a rapidly shrinking margin for error. Things can-and do-go wrong in this system, no matter how many preventive steps we take. Just look at the colossal 2003 blackout, when 50 million Americans lost power due to a simple error at a power plant in Ohio; or the one a month later, which blacked out 57 million Italians. And these two combined don't even compare to the 2001 outage in India, which affected 226 million people.

The Grid is the first history of the electrical grid intended for general readers, and it comes at a time when we badly need such a guide. As we get more and more dependent on electricity to perform even the most mundane daily tasks, the grid's inevitable shortcomings will take a toll on populations around the globe. At a moment when energy issues loom large on the nation's agenda and our hunger for electricity grows, The Grid is as timely as it is compelling.

Print length

318 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Joseph Henry Press
Publication date

March 20, 2007
Dimensions

5.9 x 0.8 x 8.9 inches
ISBN-10

0309455995
ISBN-13

978-0309455992
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Joseph Henry Press (March 20, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 318 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0309455995
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0309455992
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 0.8 x 8.9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #622,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #246 in History of Engineering & Technology
- #545 in History of Technology
- #1,947 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

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3.7 51 ratings

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Harrison Holmes

Plug into the Grid... there's more to it than your light switch

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 15, 2015

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I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend and knowledge of Mr. Schewe gained from a guy I know who knows Schewe as a friend. On our farm we had a Delco 32 volt DC/110 volt AC generating system ... 32 volts available all the time for lighting and a few special table fans; 110 volts available only when the generator was running. When we finally got commercial electric power everything changed almost overnight. We were out Rialto Road from Yazoo City, Mississippi, which had it's own steam generating plant. There was no "grid" to supply Yazoo City if the plant had serious problems. Greenwood also had it's own generating plant. That seemed to be the norm. Now move ahead seventy years. Both Yazoo City, Greenwood and the area where our Rialto Plantation had been located are now on the Grid.

Schewe's book will enlighten you with facts you never considered. You'll discover just where the energy that lights your home originates. You'll discover that much of the electrification of North America was and is conducted by private enterprise. Government sponsored projects such as TVA and Hoover Dam have played major roles.

If you think this book might not interest you, think again! Within the first few pages you'll find it interesting. After the first chapter you'll take it to work with you. It's good material for conversation and to fill your ever growing quest for knowledge.

I have found a few instances where I would have changed the wording for clarity... but that's just my opinion and does not detract from the overall message.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

A Shockingly Well Written Book on the History of Electricity

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 29, 2007

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Electricity is one of those things I never understood. I have worked around it in some capacity for years, as a fire protection engineer, but I never figured out how power got from the generators sets to the grids and then into homes, businesses and the like. And, I never really understood how AC worked or why one system was better than any other. I had a year of physics in college, and yet when electricity was described I glazed over.

Although the author himself points out that it would be impossible to put the entire history of electricity into a single volume, he does a wonderful job of beginning with the basics and explaining them so anybody can understand the subject. From the initial small grid on Pearl Street in New York to today's mammoth interconnected grids covering huge areas, the book examines and reflects on how it was built and how it operates in the world then and today.

We start the look at the grid in the middle of the black out that struck the East Coast in 2003 and then revert back to the beginning with Edison. Following Edison comes, Tesla, Westinghouse, Insull, Lilienthal and every other major player in electricity to current time. The author also covers all of the major events and a few less major ones as well. He even has a side trip to Russia during Lenin's time to examine how the grid was formed under Communist rule.

The book is fascinating in content and wonderfully written. The author has a unique ability to describe otherwise boring information and make it come alive. He also has an interesting sense of humor, and plants his tongue firmly in his cheek on more than one occasion. This book is history at its best, and I look forward to reading more of the work of this author. This is highly recommended for all!

13 people found this helpful

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charles peterson

Misleading Title. OK Book.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 17, 2017

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A mis-titled book, The Grid is more a survey of American electrification than it is an explanation of the Grid itself.

As a historical survey, this book is generally interesting and informative. In fact, the coverage of the 1965 Northeast power outage is pretty gripping. The section on the TVA was also quite interesting.

Even the best parts though are marred by the author's overly enthusiastic writing style. Sometimes it works, but in general, he uses too many rhetorical questions and too many "cutesy" comparisons and descriptions. It often feels like he is talking to a class of third graders.

I felt the book really lost steam in the later chapters with too much reverence for Amory Lovins and excessive emphasis on "green" initiatives.

Overall, the book is an easy and informative read, but certainly not great. And finally, don"t expect to learn much about what the grid is or how it (or electricity itself) actually works.

One person found this helpful

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Nick Ortega

Okay, a little disjointed...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

The Grid provides a general understanding of how the electrical grid came about, and its current state. It does not go into deep technical detail but provides basic knowledge on how a generator, transformer, inverter, etc. works. I imagine this is a hard topic to write a book on, there are a number of routes that can be taken. There are few times in this book where I thought to myself, why is the author talking about this? What does it have to do with the grid? For example, man landing on the moon, why did this story close out the book? There are plenty of times where the author jumps from story to story, and tries to hard to leave suspense in a book that doesn't require suspense. There is information to be gathered on the history of the grid, and key players in developing the grid. You are not going to understand everything there is about the electrical grid after reading this book, no book can do that, but you will grasp a general understanding.

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Jim W.

Excellent if you like popularizers of science..

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2019

Verified Purchase

Though I liked his book Maverick Genius I almost didn’t buy this one as some of the reviews were so scathing. Fortunately I read the description of the book so my expectations were met. I enjoy books by Sagan, Gould, de Grasse Tyson, Pinker, Hazen, Livio, Ferris, Mukherjee, Dawkins and others who can write about very complicated subjects that are accessible to the non scientist. It can be an enlightening experience with no other purpose beyond your own self fulfillment. I couldn’t understand a book filled with flow charts, equations and a deep background in physics. I wouldn’t attempt to read a paper by Schewe or any of these other authors that were written for their colleagues. If that’s your interest you might look at the footnotes in the book for a purer scientific explanation. If it’s for your own pleasure for a subject you enjoy but have no expertise in you might give this one a try.

4 people found this helpful

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Brian Roland Gaulke

Okay

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

Basically, I should have read the description more carefully. I mistook this book for another similarly named book. As it stands, though, I found the author's writing style somewhat off-putting. He tends to use unusual phrasing and language. Also, the overall organization of the book is not as good as it could be.

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