Door to Door audiobook

Comprei por sugestão da Audible, com base no que já tinha ouvido, e foi uma boa surpresa em uma assunto que não esperava ler. Humes explica a jornada que tudo o que consumimos precisa fazer para chegar em nossas mãos, passando por alguns exemplos como o celular, o café e a latinha de alumínio. É impressionante o caminho que os itens fazem, às vezes indo e vindo para a mesma região.Outro ponto muito legal é a discussão sobre meios de transporte, como é planejado o sistema de transporte público, o sistema de navios e containers, até a UPS e o sistema de entregas rápido que a Amazon praticamente criou e alimentou. Ainda coube no livro uma discussão sobre o papel do carro na sociedade, como aceitamos acidentes horrendos, falta de segurança, uso de espaço público e mais uma série de problemas em nome da mobilidade individual, e como carros elétricos e auto-dirigidos podem mudar isso no futuro próximo.

A mostly fascinating and refreshingly activist-minded overview on how things like horrendous consumer demand for cheap goods that no one needs, late-stage capitalism and globalization, and America's toddler-like possessiveness of and demands for the "right" to own (and park, and drive) private automobiles is completely overwhelming our infrastructure to the point of disaster and--bonus!--hastening the destruction of the planet. Not that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Edward Humes phrases it all exactly like that (though pretty close... he clearly has no patience for people who refuse to face reality which, unfortunately, is most people). Humes builds his arguments with on-the-ground reporting (at insane-busy UPS hubs and the even more insane and vast LA/Long Beach sister ports), with facts and figures (sometimes to the narrative's detriment, as the numbers come at you so fast and so large that it's impossible (for me) to put them into any relatable context), and with solid storytelling skills.Several highlights include a look at automated/robot cars, coming soon to a road near you, from all angles (Humes is VERY pro-these); at how UPS solved the "last mile" problem in a global shipping relay-chain (did you know UPS trucks never make left turns? I did not); at why the shipping container is likely the most significant invention of the 20th century; at the appalling carnage wrecked by idiot/distracted/raging/speeding drivers who then refuse to take any responsibility, and why our judicial system is complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of people eaxch year in what we insist on calling "accidents". And on. Could have used tighter editing, as when back-to-back chapter cover pretty the same thing (those SoCal ports) with repetition of facts and stories as well. But still: The door-to-door transportation of people and goods is literally going to kill us all unless bold changes are implemented immediately. Humes's book will make you think and, hopefully, take action.

Enjoyed this a lot. The best book on transportation I've ever read.Learned so much about transportation.An excellent read. Very well researched book. The research reminded me of that of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - Humes is a powerful journalist. Really inspired me to not drive unless essential - a good thing to be doing now anyways!The maddening aspects of transportation are driving me in this book:Driving a car to work. Having it sit there unused for 22 hours a day. Carbon issues with owning a car. Not taking public transit. How adding lanes is a detriment to the environment, and how there should be massive gas tax increases - based on vehicle size (if possible).If I can commute to work via public transit (1.8 hours just one way), there's almost no excuse that everyone else can't as well.Not only was this book packed with elaborate details on the issues, but also on the solutions. Memorable Sections of the Book- How coffee comes to your home- How many times around the world your phone goes before it receives its first text- The crazy world of automobiles- The road systems- Marine life and how it is affected- Ships- Public transportation- Future of driving (autonomous driving)Solutions I Loved- Ask if you really need to own a car- Increase gas taxes- Driving big vehicles SUVs are dangerous to smaller cars - tax them more- Make less lanes on roads- Dedicate lanes for bikes and public transportation- Take public transportation when you can- Buy local, buy well-made products, not dollar-store / Wal-mart goods (see more about that in Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America's Cheap Goods)It was also interesting to read this during the Evergreen Suez Canal issue, which was actually mentioned in the book as a potential sore-point!4.7/5

1) Our door-to-door lifestyle is literally nothing short of a miracle2) I desperately want to be a LOL3) I pretty much never want to drive a car again4) The book drags a little sometimes, and often geeks out on its own stats, but it's basically a must read for everyone.Counting down the days till self-driving cars...

The book was definitely not what I expected. The focus was on moving goods rather than people – and the author successfully made the argument that moving goods is something we don't think about enough but that has a huge impact on people and the way we move ourselves around. I knew nothing about the shipping industry before reading this and now I know enough to know that it's way more complex than I've been able to wrap my head around.This was a great primer for getting me up to speed (no pun intended – okay maybe kind of) on basic transportation issues and also for thinking about what major technological advances could do to our existing transportation system. The author also ends the book with a list of recommendations which keeps it from feeling too overwhelmingly bleak, but the odds of any of those recommendations being implemented in our current political climate seems pathetically low.

Solid book with great examples of how products and people move around the world into today's connected and just in time delivery world. The author points out the irony of how we can deliver a single item to any address in the world but that we still struggle to deliver people on the last mile of their journey. Additionally, the author uses good examples of how we humans rationalize the lack of safety in the personal vehicle transportation system. Good read, recommend that anyone interested in understanding the global transportation system.

This was an excellent primer on the transportation needs and crumbling infrastructure of the US. I was familiar with many of the high level concepts addressed but this gave be great data and statistics to back up these ideas and to drive home the urgency if these issues! The chapters on automobiles were chilling and left me scared to ever use roads again be that as a driver, pedestrian, or cyclist. I'm now convinced that from a safety concern and environmental perspective cars may be the single worst thing that ever happened to us and we convince ourselves otherwise for the convenience of being able to drive instead of walking 10 minutes to a bus stop. All in all, a great read if you want to learn about our strained infrastructure and urgent need to revolutionize transportation and mobility!

How does stuff get to your door?

Fascinating. Much of what is in this book I more or less was aware of, but it is a forehead slap to see it all in print in one place clearly defined and documented.Globalization is the first topic, and as an example he describes the more than 160,000 miles of travel that are required to produce an iPhone as the various components are shipped and reshipped during production, sub-assembly, assembly, distribution, and then sale. He then discusses the few relatively simple innovations that have made globalization not only possible, but inevitable.Everyone who drinks coffee should at least read chapters 3 and 4. First for the description of the amazing transportation and processing network that delivers your coffee, and second for the description of how "The Industrial Revolution absolutely ruined coffee". Apparently most of us (and I think including me) have never actually tasted what coffee is supposed to taste like.His second topic is transportation in general but especially cars. He is not fond of them. His position is that for the past fifty plus years the car was the star invention that made life as we in the developed world know it, but the time has come to move on. First he goes thru the costs of cars as our star transportation device; the set of which include economic, ecological, infrastructure, health, and energy efficiency but the largest of which by far is the injuries and deaths caused by cars. One in 112 Americans will die in a car crash, 35,400 a year!, one every 15 minutes. An American car crash injury requiring an emergency room every 12.6 SECONDS. An American car crash injury requiring medical attention every 7.3 SECONDS. An American car crash of some kind every 2.8 SECONDS. A third of the book is about cars and trucks, what they have caused to happen, have done, are doing and what we simply cannot support in this model of transportation we have going forward. Yes, he talks about alternatives; some of which need to be acted upon but some of which, like the self driving car, are just going to happen like it or not to improve things.

Door to Door is Discovery Channel on steroids. A captivating take on how goods and people are distributed around the globe. Humes (a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist) focuses predominantly on the shipping industry, but also trucking and autonomous vehicles. As someone who's never given Long Beach a first thought, let alone a second (save for shout-outs from Tupac) I was riveted by how massive containers are moved through its port, as well as the Port of Los Angeles. An interesting diversion was a look at the LOLs, or Ladies of Logistics, prominent female operators behind-the-scenes making sure everything runs smoothly. The bit about Domino's pizza distribution network was fascinating, as was the Odyssean journey taken by the contents of the morning cup of coffee on my desk. A bit depressing: how the North American economy is so service-oriented and how we are so reliant on China, South Korea and Germany for making all this stuff happen. This would make a great Father's Day gift, but it's an engaging read for anyone.

One of the most fascinating books I've ever read. I knew this should be good, my "reading career" grew to the point where I have pretty good instinct about whether or not I'll like something and even why. But I didn't expect it to be THIS good. It's textbook density of mind blowing facts about the thing so pervasive and deeply ingrained in our lives we take it for granted: transportation. Except, like with everything else, when it doesn't work. Which, incidentally, is a lot of time. But even that we seem to be taking for granted because we take transportation as inescapable fact of life, like necessary evil. It takes lives, and it takes from life. And yet, we resist to some so obvious, cheap and efficient ways to improve it, like roundabouts. Fascinating. Just fascinating.

This expertly articulated book was fascinating and I found it to be a surprising page turner! The concepts Humes discusses are not theoretical - transportation affects more than we often consider and its import cannot be overstated. Did you know that every 12.6 seconds a car crash sends someone to the hospital? And that every 15 minutes someone DIES due to a car crash? Essentially, we have a 9/11 level of death (3,000 people roughly) every MONTH because of our political reluctance to deal with our transportation choices. It's solvable, if only we truly understand whats not working and whats at stake. This book is a terrific starting point for the citizen and political alike.

Very thought-provoking! Talk about a process we should all know about!

In 2011, Interstate 405 in Los Angeles shut down for a weekend for construction and maintenance – and the city braced for the worst.More than 400,000 cars and trucks wedge themselves onto the 405 every single day – a number well above its designed capacity. The shutdown was part of a plan to add additional lanes to the freeway (all of the bridgework that had to take place without traffic interruptions would be packed into the two-and-a-half-day shutdown). The plan for what was billed as “Carmageddon” was designed by a military engineer who had built highways in the aftermath of the most recent invasion of Iraq. Hospitals added staff to their emergency rooms, celebrities were enlisted to tweet about the benefits of staying off the road, stoplights were reprogrammed. And then nothing happened. The freeway shut down and people … adjusted accordingly. There was no pile-up of cars on surrounding side streets. There was an uptick in transit usage. There was an uptick in bike usage. More people walked and carpooled and got from A-to-B in greener ways. Carmageddon never happened. Edward Humes uses this anecdote as a jumping-off point for his book “Door-to-Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation” – a delightful, fast-paced snapshot of how people and goods move from point-to-point via ship, railcar, truck and automobile. And this anecdote, with its undercurrent of “what if our conventional wisdom about transportation and infrastructure is wrong?” threads its way throughout his narrative. What if larger cars are more unsafe than smaller ones? What if adding lanes to crowded highways makes them more crowded? What if our instant gratification, door-to-door economy is limited only by our pitiful, dilapidated infrastructure?You’ve probably heard the transportation soapbox screed before. More than 61,000 of our bridges are structurally deficient, and a third of those are “fracture critical” – which really does not sound promising at all. We’re pissing away $124 billion annually in lost productivity due to traffic. Our gasoline tax hasn’t budged since the first year of Bill Clinton’s first administration. Car crashes are the leading cause of death (as of 2015) for Americans under age 31. Our cars – which cost on average $1,049 per month – typically sit idle 22 hours a day. A tiny fraction of Americans rely on public transit to move about. To quote Humes: “America’s transportation future owes as much to greed, gamesmanship, and hubris as sensible design. Perhaps more.”There are simple fixes for all of this. Raise the gas tax and use the windfall to fix our highways and bridges. Bond out improvements for airports. Implement congestion pricing in our cities to reduce gridlock and raise more money for transportation modernization. Invest in public transportation – not just expensive rail projects, but bus rapid transit as well. Encourage partnership between ride-sharing companies and bike/scooter rental companies and local transit systems. These are proven fixes for what ails us – but, like most government-involved initiatives, political will is a prerequisite. And that political will is in short supply.

Just a fascinating account of modern transportation, if a little misleadingly titled. I was expecting (and the author kinda promised in the prologue) a sort of tour of how goods get from origin point to my door – and it does cover most of that ground. But even in the intro, he makes clear that such a task is impossible – there are too many things in every product, from too many places, to even attempt it. Instead, he describes the way ports are operated (and uses the story of the woman who runs the LA ports to bring that to life), how railways work and mostly, how cars and trucks play their role. In fact, that’s the disconnect – most of this book is about cars and trucks … And Humes has a lot to say about it. He tells us that in the early days of cars, bicyclists and pedestrian deaths were called “traffic kills” rather than “accidents,” which pretty much explains how the attitude toward cars has changed. Humes also delves deeply into the notorious LA “Carmaggedon” which turned out to be one of the best traffic events in the city’s history, which he uses as a jumping off point to explain how our entire approach to transportation needs to be re-thought (and he provides the re-thinking, including strongly advocating for autonomous cars). Along the way, Humes’ research continually delights (do you know why cars are 6 feet wide? It’s because that’s the minimum width in which you can place two horses side by side – nothing to do with the car itself whatever. The roads were that width, so they made cars that would fit on them.) This is a book jammed packed with insights, information and stories about a really important topic that rarely gets much attention – it’s also a delight to read (and listen to).Grade: A

A book about transportation and the movement of goods in American logistics.It's very American-centric, mostly hinging on LA, California. Several chapters are dedicated to the flaws and dangers of wasteful, ego-driven car ownership, which is very much an American problem.The arguments that support self-driving cars are compelling. It's interesting, if not a bit long-winded. The author was eager to spout on the intricacies of every logistical routine he had encountered, which was a bit boring. I read what I wanted and skimmed what was irrelevant.I also noticed that recent successful urban planning projects featured many women leaders. Humes made a dig at the last 50 years of political, "bigger-is-better" attitude that has shaped our city planning policies. The women were more focused on human-centered approaches and "common sense." One chapter is titled "Ladies of Logistics." For the most part, there isn't much gender politics.While gender isn't explicitly stated, I wonder that if American logistics and city committees had women involved at the beginning, we wouldn't have so many conflicts with traffic now. It could also be that the US is mainly a capitalist culture from the get-go, with the pros and dooms of sacrificing sensible decisions for attention. This is my personal observation from reading this book.

I have very little to say. This was well-written, often times eerily reminding me of my own style of writing in certain sentence constructions and patterns.It has made me seriously consider moving down to one car in my own household and further studying some scientific topics more closely.....path-finding algorithms, self-driving car systems, etc.It's a topic that has been a constant fascination to me for over a decade now: trying to comprehend the incomprehensible complexity of a vast system dealing with unfathomably large numbers, distances, and data sets. Trying to parse just how many people, how many decisions, and how many resources must go into the most mundane objects in our lives. Nothing just happens, everything is the product of an uncountable number of deliberate decisions.It's a continuation of the theme that begun with my discovering James Burke's Connections series in childhood. It's understanding how the boundless complexity of our modern world easily arises from the simplest ideas, but layering thousands upon thousands of individual threads over centuries eventually leads to something it's impossible to fully unravel.....so making the necessary changes becomes that much harder, even before you encounter inevitable (irrational) resistance from the human element.