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Joseph M. Sussman
JR East Professor
Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering
Systems
June 19,
2009
In keeping with our long-time tradition (ESD,
now in its 11th year is starting to have traditions!), here
is our summer ESD reading list. We have several from non-MITers
that speak to the types of issues and challenges addressed
by ESD. Included is a 50th edition of the classic The
Two Cultures, C.P. Snow’s discussion of the relationship
between the arts and the sciences, which includes Snow’s
A Second Look, which explores the controversy that
followed this famous work. Also on the list is A Moveable
Feast by Sarah Murray, who gave a talk for ESD about
this book earlier this year.
As always we include titles from MIT authors
in our areas of interest.
Best wishes for an enjoyable summer and happy
reading!
Sarah Murray
Moveable
Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible
Journeys of the Food We Eat
Picador (October 28, 2008)
 Murray,
a Financial Times contributor, takes a look at the literal
journey of food through multilayered essays of the history
of food transportation. From the banana export business
of Central America (which was rife with America's economic
gain and political manhandling) to the creation of the barrel
(which revolutionized transcontinental trading and contributed
a new dimension to the art of winemaking), the dozen chapters
each start with a straightforward item-the shipping container,
a tin can, a tub of yogurt, etc.-and delve into topics of
greater significance like globalization, empire building,
localized farming and food aid programs. For example, her
essay on the amphora, a container used to carry olive oil
throughout the ancient Roman Empire, not only depicts the
social and economic importance of olive oil in Roman times
but also leads into the contemporary debate of regional
designation of origins for foods like Parmigiano-Reggiano
cheese or Newcastle brown ale. Erudite and thoroughly researched,
this is a fascinating read for both foodies and those who
love how the minutiae of life often provide a fresh lens
with which to
view the world.
- Publishers Weekly
C.P. Snow
The
Two Cultures (50th anniversary edition, which includes The
Two Cultures: A Second Look)
Cambridge University Press (July 30,
1993)
 The
notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual
life, is characterised by a split between two cultures—the
arts or humanities on one hand, and the sciences on the
other—has a long history. But it was C. P. Snow’s
Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began
a public debate that is still raging in the media today.
This 50th anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its
successor piece, A Second Look (in which Snow responded
to the controversy four years later) features an introduction
by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the
debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance
of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists,
the future for education and research, and the problem of
fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are
just some of the subjects discussed.
- Cambridge University Press
Felix Rohatyn
Bold
Endeavors: How our Government Built America and Why It Must
Rebuild Now
Simon & Schuster (February 24, 2009)
 This
is a short, relatively easy read by Felix Rohatyn, whose
main claim to fame was as the chairman for 18 years of the
Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) for the state of
New York “where he managed the negotiations that enabled
New York City to resolve its financial crisis.”
His main thesis in this book is that determination
and political will, together with the imagination to invest
wisely, can move the nation forward—but ideologically
he believes that this can only be done by the government,
in particular the federal government in most cases. His
book is not scholarly, but he makes a good anecdotal case
for his thesis. He looks at the Louisiana Purchase, the
Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the land grant
colleges, the Homestead Act, the Panama Canal, the Rural
Electrification Administration, the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, the GI Bill and finally the Interstate system.
The casual history of these events has some merit, and his
argument that history can provide a guidepost to the future
is interesting and useful. This is a legitimate summer read;
you could take this to the beach and work your way
through it in a couple of hours.
For the transportation people among us I note
that the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the
Panama Canal and the Interstate highway system are all transportation
initiatives—largescale infrastructure—and as
educators we are interested in the land grant colleges and
the GI Bill
as major education initiatives.
-JS
Tom Vanderbilt
Traffic:
Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Knopf (July 29, 2008)
 Whether
driving to work or heading to the shore on summer weekends,
Americans spend lots of time in their cars—much of
it bemoaning the habits of other drivers. Writer Tom Vanderbilt
plumbs the psychology and sociology of driving in Traffic:
Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
(Knopf). When people get behind the wheel, he observes,
"We are navigating through a legal system, we are becoming
social actors in a spontaneous setting, we are processing
a bewildering amount of information, we are constantly making
predictions and calculations and on-the-fly judgments of
risk and reward." Vanderbilt's readers learn, among
other things, that roads that look dangerous have fewer
accidents than those that seem safe, that the least corrupt
countries have the lowest crash rates, and that people don't
drive nearly as well as they think they do. This includes
you.
-The Boston Globe, “The Books
of Summer,” May 25, 2009
Nicholas A. Ashford, Charles C.
Caldart
Environmental
Law, Policy, and Economics: Reclaiming the Environmental
Agenda
MIT Press (May 30, 2008)
 The
past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution
in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation
and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant
advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment
of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This
book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues
in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their
development over the past few decades through an examination
of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars.
The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution
control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation,
design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change
and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need
to address broader issues of sustainable development.
Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics,
which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT,
treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in
environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative
law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it
goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a
single volume: the information-based obligations of industry,
enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary
alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment,
environmental economics, and technological innovation and
diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that
government should play a reduced role in environmental protection,
this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements—coupled
with flexible means for meeting them—and meaningful
stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about
environmental improvements and technological transformations.
-MIT Press
Editors: Stephen B. Miles, Sanjay
E. Sarma, John R. Williams
RFID
Technology and Applications
Cambridge University Press (June 9, 2008)
 Covering
both passive and active RFID systems, the challenges to
RFID implementation are addressed using specific industry
research examples and common integration issues. Key topics
include RF tag performance optimization, evaluation methodologies
for RFID and Real-Time-Location Systems (RTLS) and sensors,
EPC network simulation, RFID in the retail supply chain,
and applications in product lifecycle management, anti-counterfeiting
and cold chain management. The book brings together insights
from world’s leading research laboratories in the
field, including the Auto-ID Labs at MIT, successor to the
Auto-ID Center which developed the Electronic Product Code
scheme which is set to become the global standard for product
identification.
-Cambridge University Press
Steven Spear
Chasing
the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition
and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win
McGraw-Hill (September 29, 2008)
 Steven
Spear is no stranger to Toyota watchers, students of the
Toyota Production System, or HBR readers. Over the past
10 years, ever since he co-wrote (with H. Kent Bowen) his
first HBR article, “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota
Production System,” Spear, now a senior lecturer at
MIT, has dazzled readers with his insights into what makes
Toyota tick and his understanding of how any organization
can use those ideas to improve its effectiveness. Not surprisingly,
his first tome was highly anticipated, and it’s probably
an understatement to say that it won’t disappoint.
Writing in an eminently approachable fashion,
Spear quickly sets up the problem he plans to tackle: namely,
how companies can catch up with what he calls high-velocity
organizations, such as Alcoa, Southwest Airlines, and, of
course, Toyota. He argues that the reason companies like
these excel is that they accept, first, that because systems
are complex, problems are bound to occur, and second, that
because processes cross boundaries, problem solving has
to cut across functions.
-From a review by Anand Rama of the
Harvard Business Review
Andreas Schäfer, John B. Heywood,
Henry D. Jacoby, and Ian A. Waitz
Transportation
in a Climate-Constrained World
MIT Press (June 30, 2009)
 In
the nineteenth century, horse transportation consumed vast
amounts of land for hay production, and the intense traffic
and ankle-deep manure created miserable living conditions
in urban centers. The introduction of the horseless carriage
solved many of these problems but has created others. Today
another revolution in transportation seems overdue. Transportation
consumes two-thirds of the world's petroleum and has become
the largest contributor to global environmental change.
Most of this increase in scale can be attributed to the
strong desire for personal mobility that comes with economic
growth.
In Transportation in a Climate-Constrained
World, the authors present the first integrated assessment
of the factors affecting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
from passenger transportation. They examine such topics
as past and future travel demand; the influence of personal
and business choices on passenger travel's climate impact;
technologies and alternative fuels that may become available
to mitigate GHG emissions from passenger transport; and
policies that would promote their adoption. And most important,
taking into account all of these options, they consider
how to achieve a more sustainable transportation system
in the next thirty
to fifty years.
-MIT Press
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