The U.S. highway system i. the greatest public works project in history. rivaling the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Panama Canal, and the Great Wall of China in cost, materials, and years of labor involved. Yet it has become an almost ordinary part of the American landscape. Swift explores the history of the construction of the interstates, most often credited to the Eisenhower administration. Actually, the system's origins are much older, since many interstates were built over or parallel to older roads. Swift goes back to the days of the horse and buggy and before WWII, when anonymous bureaucrats began to dream of interstate highways and engineers considered how to build them, cutting through mountains along the way. Swift explores how the interstate system has changed American culture and economics, producing faster travel past small towns that have subsequently withered and promoting suburban sprawl and enormously increased reliance on oil and the automobile. But at the same time, that system has helped knit together a far-flung nation in ways good and bad.--Bush, Vaness. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Swift (Where They Lay) begins his account of the building of America's "triumph of engineering" in the early 20th century, long before Eisenhower authorized the interstate highway system, and ends with a discussion of the future of today's aging, gas-hungry system. To form a coherent picture of the 47,000-mile undertaking, Swift weaves together the engineering feats, the routing and naming debates, the politics of funding, and the social costs of relocating citizens in the proposed freeway paths. A strong narrative follows the careers of the men who pioneered the system, primary among them Thomas Harris McDonald, who headed the Federal Bureau of Public Roads for 34 years, starting in 1919. While Swift admires the builders' accomplishments, he gives voice to highway critics, including social commentator Lewis Mumford. Swift's eye for anecdotes, some absurd in retrospect (for example the suggestion to blast through California's mountains with nuclear bombs), humanizes the enterprise. His writing is easygoing, and readers interested in urban planning as well as engineering will find a well-told story about a defining American feature. 8 pages of b&w photos. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Swift (Where They Lay: Searching for America's Lost Soldiers) takes on the myth-plagued story of how America's interstate highway system came to be. Not so much a single story but a series of intertwined tales, the book busts many of the myths around the who, what, when, why, and how of today's superhighways. The stakeholders (users, industrialists, politicians, engineers) and their roles are surprisingly fluid over time. While a discussion of the highways as social and economic change agents occupies some of the book, it is not the primary focus. Swift also does not focus on engineering specifications, roadway structures, or road alignment battles across the nation, though he occasionally mentions those topics. This is a story about the characters who, over several decades, played a role in building the greatest public works project in history. Unfortunately, few pictures are available. VERDICT At a time when "we can't afford it" and "we don't need it" dominate public discourse, it's nice to look back to an era when visionary investment was still possible. For history and engineering buffs.-James A. Buczynski, Seneca Coll. of Applied Arts & Tech, Toronto (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.