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The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World, and the Way We Live Today
The Routes of Man How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today Author:Ted Conover From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award winner: a hugely illuminating book about roads and their power to change the world. — Metaphorically and literally, roads bind our world, changing the landscape and the lives of those who inhabit it. With his marvelous eye for detail and his contagious enthusiasm, Ted Conover... more » explores six transformative byways. In Peru, he examines the government’s attempt to build a highway through the Andes, creating jobs but facilitating the transport of endangered mahogany. In East Africa, he revisits truckers whose travels have been linked to the worldwide spread of AIDS. In the West Bank, he traverses security checkpoints with both Palestinians and Israelis, discovering the injustices and danger born by both sides. He predicts how year-round accessibility will affect the now-isolated Indian region of Ladakh; describes the exuberant and terrifying upsurge in car culture as highways proliferate across China; and gives us an apocalyptic but precise vision of Lagos, Nigeria, where poverty and pollution erupt from the megacity’s overcrowded freeways.
A spirited, urgent book that reveals the costs and benefits of being connected—how, from ancient Rome to the present, roads have played a crucial role in human life, advancing civilization even as they set it back.« less