Asphalt: A History - Kenneth O’Reilly Audiobook
Shared by:mrpride
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Read by Kirk Winkler
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged
Publisher’s Summary
Humanity has used asphalt for thousands of years. This humble hydrocarbon may have glued the first arrowhead to the first shaft, but the changes wrought by this material are most dramatic since its emergence as pavement. Since the 1920s the automobile and blacktop have allowed unprecedented numbers of Americans to experience the beauty of their continent from the Adirondacks to the Rockies and beyond, to Big Sur and the Pacific Coast Highway. Blacktop roads, runways, and parking lots constitute the central arteries of our environment, creating a distinct “political territory” and a “political economy of velocity”.
In Asphalt: A History, Kenneth O’Reilly provides a history of this everyday substance. By tracing the history of asphalt - in both its natural and processed forms - from ancient times to the present, O’Reilly sets out to identify its importance within various contexts of human society and culture. Although O’Reilly argues that asphalt creates our environment, he believes it also eventually threatens it. Looking at its role in economics, politics, and global warming, O’Reilly explores asphalt’s contribution to the history, and future, of America and the world.
The book is published by University of Nebraska Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
“A fascinating story that will reshape your sense of what binds the world together.” (Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?)
“Read this book, step outside, and see our world anew.” (Paul Bogard, author of The Ground Beneath Us)
“A fresh perspective on some of the central themes of modern global history.” (Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History)
©2021 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska (P)2021 Redwood Audiobooks
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| Creation Date: | Tue, 04 Apr 2023 14:42:56 +0200 |
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| Kenneth O’Reilly - Asphalt - A History.mp3 602.12 MBs | |
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| Combined File Size: | 602.75 MBs |
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| Comment: | Updated by History Audiobook |
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This post has 6 comments with rating of 5/5
April 4th, 2023
A stone-cold classic. I like that “political economy of velocity” phrase.
April 4th, 2023
Thanks for sharing
April 6th, 2023
I enjoy a good mix of listening to absolutely trashy fiction as well as non-fiction like this. Thanks for sharing.
April 6th, 2023
A History of Asphalt?
That inspires me to write my six-volume opus: The Story of Self-Raising Flour from May 1954 to January 1955 in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
It’ll sell like crack.
April 6th, 2023
That was indeed a critical time/place in the uplifting history of self-raising flour, nylon. I applaud you with acclamation, & encourage you to immediately rise to the challenge of your proposed floury epic.
May 22nd, 2026
The arrogance of the person who chooses to call himself Caesar863 annoys me so much that I am posting this long response even though he’s unlikely to see it years after his comment here which revealed simultaneously his belief in his superior intelligence & knowledge, and his ignorance
The political economy of velocity is indeed a thing. Paul Virilio is the scholar who brought this subject to the forefront in his book Speed And Politics. A few things worth considering:
* The development of airborne weapons, especially ICBM nuclear missiles, with faster and faster speeds, deployed closer and closer to the target, in a race to achieve counterforce superiority, that is to say, the ability to destroy the other side’s nuclear weaponry before it gets off the ground. (A related goal is to create a vast number of weapons of different types so that ongoing strikes are possible, just like in other wars.) The idea is not to actually launch a first strike, etc; The idea is to create this capability so that it can be used as leverage. And it has been used as leverage numerous times during the Cold War. Velocity of weaponry is key to this leverage. It is difficult to demonstrate silobusting capabilities in tests, but it is easy to demonstrate the velocity of weapons and tests which the other side can see and document. That’s one aspect or one area of the political economy of velocity.
* As many people know by now, traders on Wall Street and other exchanges have gained advantages by constructing and deploying ever faster connections to and from the trading floor. This speed enables trading to occur in fractions of seconds, enabling small gains which add up. (Presumably AI is now involved in such trades. At least I presume this trading is still occurring. There was talk of making it illegal at the NYSE. But even if that manner of treating has been regulated out of existence, speed is still of the essence in modern day trading. It’s the main reason regular folks like us don’t get involved in stock trading in a serious way. We can’t compete because we can’t do it fast enough: we don’t have the technology, we don’t have the inside connections, or the inside information (illegal but used everyday, especially among people in Congress)
* the popularity of large pickup trucks, SUVs, and SUV-like cars, in the United States. And what is one of the key things these vehicles have in common? Their power, their ability to accelerate quickly and maintain high speed. Yet if a person is driving legally, these attributes are hardly ever called for, if ever.
This is not one of those quickly cranked out books about the history of a single commodity. It’s an economic, environmental, and technological history book from a university press. And a deals with a pretty serious issue. Just start Googling how many parking spaces there are for every registered vehicle in the United States, and for every person, etc. One could argue that the ease in which we pave over the natural environment
With massive parking lots around stadiums theme parks etc, has set the stage for the development of hyperscale data centers like the one planned in Utah.
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