In the 1940s Chicago Union Station handled more than 300 trains and 100,000 passengers a day, writes journalism and nature writing teacher at Northern Michigan University James McCommons. He discusses railroading in America, and, while... Read More

“Sometimes I think should have listened to my parents and become a doctor or a lawyer-but you know, I don’t think I could take the pay cut.” So begins Wiswell’s helpful manual on the business end of farming. Wiswell himself... Read More

“The Airflow had a lumbering, stupid look, a rhinoceros ugliness,” wrote styling historian Paul Wilson. The “streamlined” 1934 Chrysler Airflow was the company’s biggest design mistake—the Airflop, as acerbic pundits called... Read More

“Many of us carry around a bucolic view of farming, ranching, and rural America. We think of farming as being toxic only after the introduction of DDT at the close of World War II. Such presumptions are wrong,” Will Allen writes.... Read More

Few enterprises require as much vigilance on the part of the consumer as hiring a contractor. Whether repairing a leaky roof or remodeling the whole house, “When that time comes,” author Amabile writes, “you had best be prepared to... Read More

It may seem far-fetched that by the end of this century a satellite will be furnishing a cheap continuous and inexhaustible supply of electric power to ten billion earthlings. But after reading Ed Bair’s analysis of the current and... Read More

Between hybrid cars, organic cotton t-shirts, and energy efficient light bulbs, it’s clear the environment is increasingly on people’s minds—not least for those who design these eco-items. In this useful new book, Thorpe, a senior... Read More

Two women are undergoing in vitro fertilization. The embryologist whose job it is to sort and prepare the embryos for implantation mixes them up. Nine months later one of the women gives birth to the other woman’s baby. Is it human... Read More