A look at the history of human transportation, from the invention of the wheel through the era of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how transportation inevitably shapes civilization.

"Why is it that the mass transit systems of American cities are, by and large, inadequate? It's a common question and one that has generated substantial scholarship. But Jake Berman's The Lost Subways of North America offers a new way to consider it: a visual-and fun-journey through the past, present, and possible future of urban transit. Featuring Berman's own colorful maps of old, often forgotten streetcar lines, lost ideas for never-built transit,...

December, 1943: A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber's tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler-and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... What happened next would defy imagination and later...

From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight.
 
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"London Under" is a wonderful, atmospheric, imaginative short study of everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheaters to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, and modern tube stations.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us. Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers...

"After two and a half years as NPR's Moscow bureau chief, David Greene travels across the country--a 6,000-mile journey by rail, from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok--to speak with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years. Reaching beyond the headline-grabbing protests in Moscow, Greene speaks with a group of singing babushkas from Buranovo, a teenager hawking 'space rocks' from last spring's meteor shower...

Explores the rich history, anecdotes, and inside stories of one of the world's key cultural destinations, which is credited with revolutionizing urban as well as suburban development everywhere.

In 1849, Virginia began a bold railroad expansion toward the Ohio River and its lucrative trade connections. The project's plan covered 423 miles and called for piercing two mountain chains with three railroads. The Blue Ridge Railroad was the shortest of these but crossed the most mountainous terrain. At times, hired slaves, who prepared the tracks, and Irish immigrants, who blasted the tunnels, faced challenges that seemed almost insurmountable....

"Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England in August 1914. In January 1915, after battling its way for six weeks through a thousand miles of pack ice and now only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed. But...