Engineering & Transportation Archives

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they’re practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. […Learn More]

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way

Some of humanity’s mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale—and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump. […Learn More]

American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs

The epic road trips—and surprising friendship—of John Burroughs, nineteenth-century naturalist, and Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, inventors of the modern age. […Learn More]

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life—the humble parking spot

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don’t resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Indeed, in the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed—and in some cases demolished—our homes and our cities in a Sisyphean quest for cheap and convenient car storage. […Learn More]

Billionaires’ Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World’s Most Exclusive Skyscrapers

A fly-on-the-wall account of the ferocious ambition, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world: the new Manhattan megatowers known as Billionaires’ Row—from a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal […Learn More]

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

A momentous look at the private companies driving a revolutionary new economy in space, from the New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk

With the launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. And that milestone carried major implications: Silicon Valley, not NASA or nation states, was suddenly cemented as the epicenter of the new Space Age. […Learn More]

The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone

From the former chief economist of the FCC, a remarkable history of the U.S. government’s regulation of the airwaves

Popular legend has it that before the Federal Radio Commission was established in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos, with broadcasting stations blasting powerful signals to drown out rivals. […Learn More]

Calling All Minds: How To Think and Create Like an Inventor

From world-renowned autism spokesperson, scientist, and inventor Temple Grandin — a book of personal stories, inventions, and facts that will blow young inventors’ minds and make them soar.

Have you ever wondered what makes a kite fly or a boat float? Have you ever thought about why snowflakes are symmetrical, or why golf balls have dimples? Have you ever tried to make a kaleidoscope or build a pair of stilts? […Learn More]

Tesla: Wizard at War: The Genius, the Particle Beam Weapon, and the Pursuit of Power

In this revelatory new book, the author of the award-winning international bestseller Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla delves deeper into the groundbreaking ideas and astonishing mind of one of the greatest geniuses of modern times . . . […Learn More]

The Right to Repair: Reclaiming the Things We Own

In The Right to Repair, Aaron Perzanowski analyzes the history of repair to show how we’ve arrived at this moment, when a battle over repair is being waged – largely unnoticed – in courtrooms, legislatures, and administrative agencies. With deft, lucid prose, Perzanowski explains the opaque and complex legal landscape that surrounds the right to repair and shows readers how to fight back. […Learn More]