Penguin BooksProduct DescriptionA 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 " beneath urban life in the twenty-first century.Amazon.com ReviewKate Ascher could not have chosen a much drier topic for a book than water mains?? parking meters?? railroad classification yards?? and the other doodads of city infrastructure. But in Ascher's captivating book?? The Works?? the innards of New York City come alive. Wonderfully illustrated?? the book combines text?? maps?? and other graphics to tell the story of the systems that keep America's greatest city running smoothly. How are traffic lights coordinated? How do potholes form and which areas have streets with the best "ss score"? How is mail processed? What happens when you flush the toilet? Ascher?? who has a PhD in government from the London School of Economics and is now executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation?? dissects the colorful workings of all these systems and much more. The Works contains a section on pretty much every aspect of the Big Apple's infrastructure. You'll learn the mystery of the shiny silver tanks that have become a familiar sight on New York streets. (They prevent moisture from damaging underground phone lines.) Ascher explains how the city's 23 million daily pieces of mail are processed. We