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A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World
Joseph Henry Press
March 2007
On Sale: March 1, 2007
311 pages
ISBN: 030910260X
EAN: 9780309102605
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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. Relying on a sort of NATO alliance of utilities pledged to help each other in time of need, vast amounts of invisible resources are moved and exchanged on a second's notice. At times, the grid 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, it operates on a rapidly shrinking margin for error. Things can - and do - go wrong in this system and no matter how many preventive steps we take are, failure is inevitable. 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 a month later when 57 million Italians woke up without cappuccino. Still, these two combined don't even compare to the outage in 2001 that affected 226 million people in India. As we get more and more dependent on electricity to perform even the most mundane daily tasks - from infrared urinals and sinks to automatic doors - the grid's inevitable shortcomings will take a toll on populations around the globe. As energy issues loom large on the nation's agenda and our hunger for electricity only grows, The Grid is as timely as it is compelling.
 Media BuzzTalk of the Nation - May 4, 2007
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