Book Log 2019 #2: The Road Taken by Henry Petroski

In this book, Petroski looks at infrastructure (transportation infrastructure in particular) and, as with many of his previous books, gives its history in great detail and full of the surprising facts that often make his books so much fun to read. Better still, it avoids the trap of getting too bogged down in those facts, a problem that made The Book on the Bookshelf so hard to get through.

And as you might expect from a civil engineer, he also uses this book to argue for both increased spending to fix the things that are broken and better planning in implementing new infrastructure. It's hard to argue with either point, and I was happily surprised at the focus on making better infrastructure in the future. We don't often talk about creating infrastructure to solve (or avoid) future problems, which is how we wind up with ever-wider freeways that still fill up with traffic.

A good read on a real problem that will hopefully get more attention soon.