In this spirit, the team at NASA set about developing the Space Shuttle, arguably the most complex piece of machinery ever created. The world’s first reusable spacecraft, it launched like a rocket, landed like a glider, and carried out complicated missions in between.  Bold They Rise tells the story of the Space Shuttle through the personal experiences of the astronauts, engineers, and scientists who made it happen—in space and on the ground, from the days of research and design through the heroic accomplishments of the program to the tragic last minutes of the Challenger disaster. In the participants’ own voices, we learn what so few are privy to: what it was like to create a new form of spacecraft, to risk one’s life testing that craft, to float freely in the vacuum of space as a one-man satellite, to witness a friend’s death. A “guided tour” of the Shuttle—in historical, scientific, and personal terms—this book provides a fascinating, richly informed, and deeply personal view of a feat without parallel in the human story.

    Half an hour later, the greatest mystery in aviation history had begun.Though most of us will board an aircraft at some point in our lives, we know little about how they work and the procedures surrounding their operation. It is that mystery that makes the loss of MH370 so terrifying. Follow along step-by-step as Wrigley recreates the flight and its disappearance. Review the many varied theories as to how it could have happened — up to and including alien abduction. The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 also introduces a variety of related crashes and incidents, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.

    From the historic moment in September 1830 when the first train ran between Liverpool and Manchester, to the high speed trains bulleting across Asia and Europe, The Iron Road: An Illustrated History of the Railroad looks at how railroads have changed the world.Photographs, maps, paintings, and illustrations bring events and locations to life, adding a unique visual quality to the stories of great invention, feats of mind-boggling engineering, groundbreaking changes in trade and commerce, and tales of adventurers, visionaries, and rogues.The Iron Road is the third title in DK's successful illustrated histories format, which combines text-rich narratives with beautiful visual design.

    The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads.Without cyclists, motorists wouldn't have hit the ground running when it came to places to drive this new form of transport.'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Road Improvements Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in the 1880s - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

    The central question – how do we get more money to continue with our current approach – fails to adequately explain why our current approach has left us lacking funds in the first place. Political leaders say they want a “world class transportation system” but are not able to explain, in any credible way, how to bring that vision about. A World Class Transportation System explains why we are stuck, the consensus principles that can unite Americans and the practical – albeit paradigm-shifting – approach that can be used to build the highways, transit systems and local transportation investments we need to be economically competitive.

    Using gorgeous graphics and clear, simple, language, Ascher explains the infrastructure and engineering marvels around us." --Slate.comIn our digital age, it’s easy to forget that almost everything we enjoy about modern life depends on motion. We ride in cars and on buses and trains to work; enjoy food shipped over oceans; fly high in the sky to any point on the planet. Over the last century, the world has come to rely on its ability to move just about anywhere effortlessly. But what prompted this transformation? What inventions allowed it to happen? And how do the vehicles and systems that keep us in motion today—airports, trains, cars, and satellites—really work? Exploring our incredible interconnected world is the task of Kate Ascher’s The Way to Go: Moving by Sea, Land, and Air. Lusciously illustrated and meticulously researched, The Way to Go reveals the highly complex and largely invisible network of global transportation. How is cargo moved from inland factory to seaside port, and how is it transferred from shore to ship? How do ships and planes navigate their routes without landmarks? What happens under the hood of a car or in the undercarriage of a people mover? How did planes become cheaper than ships or trains? Why are some spaceships reusable and others not? What tools are needed to build today’s immense bridges and tunnels, and what ensures they don’t collapse? How does a helicopter really stay aloft? What happens when lightning strikes an airplane or when one satellite crashes with another? What will the car of tomorrow look like?Focusing on the machines that underpin our lives, Ascher’s The Way to Go also introduces the systems that keep those machines in business—the emergency communication networks that connect ships at sea, the automated tolling mechanisms that maintain the flow of highway traffic, the air control network that keeps planes from colliding in the sky. Equally fascinating are the technologies behind these complex systems: baggage tag readers that make sure people’s bags go where they need to; automated streetlights that adjust their timing based on traffic flow; GPS devices that pinpoint where we are on earth at any second. Together these technologies move more people farther, faster, and more cheaply than at any other time in history.As our lives and our businesses become more entwined with others across the globe, there has never been a better time to understand how transportation works. Indispensable and unforgettable, Kate Ascher’s The Way to Go is a gorgeous graphic guide to a world moving as never before.

    The 2nd Tank Army was not an ordinary force; by 1945 it was an elite Guards formation which played a decisive role in the Soviet offensive operations of that year and whose tanks were the first to enter Berlin's streets. The Army commander, Colonel-General Semen Bogdanov, became a Marshal of Armored Troops and was promoted to the position of Chief Commander of all armored and tank units of the USSR shortly after the war, and remained in this position until 1953. 2nd Guards Tank Army remained in Germany until 1993, a period of 48 years. It is the only Soviet Tank Army of the war that still exists today, now named 2nd Guards Army. This study is based on the rarely available operational documents of the Army from the Central Archives of the Russian Defense Ministry and provides an analysis of every battle it fought in World War II. This includes Operation Citadel North (Kursk), Sevsk, Cherkassy, Tyrgul-Frumos and Jassy, Warsaw, Vistula-Oder, Pomerania (including Sonnenwende) and Berlin. What also differentiates this book is that it was created in cooperation with the senior army general (Anatoly Shvebig) who was an active participant in all the Army's engagements. Another unique point is that the combat operations are covered from both sides in a scope and scale that has never previously been attempted. The day by day coverage of events, honest views of the Army's commanders, full statistical data (including unit strengths, movements, and casualties for each operation from both Russian and German points of view), and the 'human element' based on the exciting firsthand reminiscences of Soviet tank officers all make this study an incredibly valuable source of information on tank battles fought on the Eastern Front 1943-1945. According to Major-General Anatoly Svebig, deputy commander of 12th Guards Tank Corps within the 2nd Guards Tank Army, this is the best study on any Soviet unit he has ever seen in his long life! Volume 1 focuses on the first half of the Army's service in the Great Patriotic War. 2nd Tank Army was created in January 1943. In spring and summer of 1943 it was engaged in the fierce battles at Sevsk and Kursk. Combat experience was heavily paid for in blood. The Army played a critical role in containing a strike of the German III. Panzerkorps in February 1944, aimed at rescuing units in the Cherkassy pocket. In March-April 1944 2nd GTA carried out a deep raid to Uman and was amongst the first Russian units that crossed the Romanian border. In May-June 1944 Army was engaged in combats at Tyrgul Frumos and Jassy against strong German armored forces belonging to 'Grossdeutschland' and 24. Panzer-Division. The text is fully supported by specially commissioned color maps and an extensive selection of photographs, many from private collections in Russia. Volume 2 will provide a detailed record of the Army for the remainder of World War II, including its elevation to Guards status later in 1944.

    Covering both local and global issues, Jon Shaw and Iain Docherty balance a celebration of the advantages that modern transportation systems have brought with a critical look at the many poor conceptions and executions of transportation policy. Centering their study around the notion of the journey, they follow the fictitious Smith family on a trip, documenting the many transportation issues they face and explaining how those issues have come about, what policy trade-offs were responsible for them, and what can be done to fix them.

    

    Affluent and predominantly white residents fought back in a much heralded “freeway revolt,” saving such historic neighborhoods as Greenwich Village and New Orleans’s French Quarter. This book tells of the other revolt, a movement of creative opposition, commemoration, and preservation staged on behalf of the mostly minority urban neighborhoods that lacked the political and economic power to resist the onslaught of highway construction.Within the context of the larger historical forces of the 1960s and 1970s, Eric Avila maps the creative strategies devised by urban communities to document and protest the damage that highways wrought. The works of Chicanas and other women of color—from the commemorative poetry of Patricia Preciado Martin and Lorna Dee Cervantes to the fiction of Helena Maria Viramontes to the underpass murals of Judy Baca—expose highway construction as not only a racist but also a sexist enterprise. In colorful paintings, East Los Angeles artists such as David Botello, Carlos Almaraz, and Frank Romero satirize, criticize, and aestheticize the structure of the freeway. Local artists paint murals on the concrete piers of a highway interchange in San Diego’s Chicano Park. The Rondo Days Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Black Archives, History, and Research Foundation in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami preserve and celebrate the memories of historic African American communities lost to the freeway.Bringing such efforts to the fore in the story of the freeway revolt, The Folklore of the Freeway moves beyond a simplistic narrative of victimization. Losers, perhaps, in their fight against the freeway, the diverse communities at the center of the book nonetheless generate powerful cultural forces that shape our understanding of the urban landscape and influence the shifting priorities of contemporary urban policy.

    It is remarkable to note that at that early date steam locomotives were used, filling the tunnels with smoke and soot; the first electric trains were introduced in 1890. Colourfully presented in Haynes's famous Owners' Workshop Manual livery, this book provides an accessible and well illustrated introduction to the history and workings of the world's oldest underground railway.

    Yet drivers started to experience a love/hate relationship with the four-wheeled machine that, previously, symbolized nothing but speed and freedom. The economic rollercoaster sent fuel prices soaring, and it seemed British manufacturers, beset by striking workers and falling quality standards, were stalling as Japan's Datsuns, Hondas, and Toyotas cruised off with contented customers. Britain's new Rover 3500 was exciting and the Jaguar XJ12 an awesome engineering achievement, but the solid quality of BMWs and Mercedes made more sense. Giles Chapman documents the whole turbulent decade in this fascinating and entertaining book through the cars that dominated, and he explains how the much-maligned Morris Marina and Reliant Robin actually helped drivers out of a jam.

    Yet over the past century the nation’s stations have often been overlooked or dismissed, and have suffered accordingly. Today a new interest in railways – fuelled by the need for sustainability, by a growing awareness of the realities of transport economics and by the dedication of enthusiastic volunteers at heritage railways across the country – has sparked a renaissance for the historic railway station and a new appreciation of the aesthetic virtues and regeneration potential of imaginative station architecture. The English Railway Station is an accessible, engaging and comprehensively illustrated general history of the architectural development and social history of the British railway station, from the dawn of the Railway Age to the ravages of the 1960s and the station’s rebirth at the end of the 20th century. It traces how the station evolved into a recognisable building type, examines the great cathedrals and the evocative country stations of the Victorian era, and looks at how the railway station has, over the last fifty years, regained its place at the heart of our communities.

    Where is the whistle? Which handle operates the brakes and what is a regulator? And do you really want to be in a locomotive cab where your front will bake and your rear will freeze? Over the years, accidents have occurred on the railways and to prevent a reoccurrence, rules have been made. Do you know them? How are trains kept apart so that you don't strike the one in front, or are hit by the one in the rear? What's to stop trains on a single line colliding head-on? Colin Maggs has assembled a really fascinating collection of illustrated railwaymen's handbooks, which were required reading for a footplate man. They answer all these questions and more.

    The author covers airport management, runways, terminals, air traffic control and airport operations, including fuelling, baggage services, freight, passenger services, retail, engineering, emergency services, ground transportation systems, security, meteorology, simulator training and telecommunications. This is a fascinating subject, ripe for the Haynes Manual treatment.

    Each of them seemed to possess the strength of character and commitment necessary to overcome apparently insurmountable obstacles as the United States entered into a Cold War space race with the Soviet Union. This was never more evident than on the epic suborbital MR-4 flight of Liberty Bell 7 with astronaut Virgil ( Gus ) Grissom piloting the spacecraft to a successful splashdown, followed by the premature blowing of the craft s explosive hatch. After a hurried exit and struggling to stay afloat, he could only watch helplessly as the recovery helicopter pilot valiantly fought a losing battle to save the sinking capsule. That day NASA not only lost a spacecraft but came perilously close to losing one of its Mercury astronauts, a decorated Korean fighter pilot from Indiana who might one day have soared to the highest goal of them all, as the first person to set foot on the Moon. For the first time, many of those closest to the flight of Liberty Bell 7 and astronaut Gus Grissom offer their stories and opinions on the dramatic events of July 21, 1961, and his later pioneering Gemini mission. They also tell of an often controversial life cut tragically and horrifically short in a launch pad fire that shocked the nation."