MITPressLog

Award News - 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School wins an Ippy

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick is an illustrated tutorial of architecture and design basics. It has just won a 2008 Independent Publisher Book Award in the architecture category.
For more information, see http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1231.

Wednesday Blog Watch - Summer Reading

It's almost summer here in the northern hemisphere, and summer reading lists are starting to make their appearances. Just for the record, we like to read year-round. But for those who find reading to be more of a summer sport, let's have a look at a few summer readings lists (well, the ones that include MIT Press books, anyway).
The witty "The World's Fair", one of our favorites of the ScienceBlogs, is planning to read The Landscape of Reform by David Minteer. But see the entire list here.
University of Michigan's Urban and Regional Planning department maintains a summer reading list of good urban titles, including several MITP titles such as the classic Image of the City by Kevin Lynch.
A discussion on Rhizome about summer reading for art grads can be found here.  Some suggestions made so far: Participation by Clare Bishop and Rhythm Science by DJ Spooky (both are on sale right now, by the way).
From "Educational Paradigms", a summer reading list for "music lovers of different types" includes David Huron's Sweet Anticipation, a book that explains how and why music evokes various emotions.
"Differences and Repetitions", a blog about "media, philosophy, and the politics of culture" notes several MIT Press books on last year's summer reading list. Galaxygoo, who blogs on "science, art, education, technology, science and data visualization", made a visit to the MIT Press bookstore last year and produced a summer must-read list. Well, so, how did it go last year? and what's on the agenda for this summer?

Behind Our High Technology Corridor

Just a few decades ago, Tysons Corner was dominated by dairy farms and gravel pits. Today, it's where businesses govern the world's Internet traffic, assist the American government in military planning, carry out security analysis, and more. Yesterday, WAMU radio's Kojo Nnamdi talked with our own Paul Ceruzzi (Internet Alley) about the region - everything from the local politics of land use to the impact of the postwar movement on central cities affected the development of Tysons Corner and its Internet Alley.

In case you  missed it, you can listen here.  Ceruzzi also wrote a post for us a few weeks back on the recent Dulles Rail revival news in the area. 

Wednesday Blog Watch - Book Reviewers

In this age of book reviewer cutbacks, it is heartening to see bloggers reviewing books on their websites, and keeping alive the spirit of critique. This week we look at bloggers who've reviewed some MIT Press books recently.
Paying with Plastic, a book about the history of the credit card industry, was reviewed by the blog Only Slightly Bent.
John Palfrey blogs about Learning Race and Ethnicity in his blog at Harvard Law School.
Confronting the Coffee Crisis is reviewed on, of all things, a blog about tea called The Tea Pages:

Yes, I know this is a tea blog and this book is about coffee. However, the topic and content are extraordinarily important for the tea industry as well - how do we ensure that growing and producing coffee (and tea) can continue to be ecologically and economically sustainable?

Not really a book review, but in a post about Grand Theft Auto, the Brainy Gamer recommends chapters from Jesper Juul's Half-real , Ian Bogost's Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, and Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's Rules of Play.
Speaking of reviews of games books, Second Person was reviewed on Slashdot recently.

The classic The Rediscovery of the Mind by John Searle is discussed on the Thoughts, Books, and Philosophy blog.
Another classic: the aesthetic appeal of 1969's Bauhaus is discussed in this Tonyvenne.org post.

Two Consummate Authors of Music, Language, and Culture Join Forces!

McNally Robinson is hosting the Sound Unbound book launch tonight.  There will be readings from Sound Unbound and Jonathan Lethem's novel You Don't Love Me Yet. Stop by if you are in the neighborhood.The bookstore is really easy to reach, and It'll be a great time. Who knows, maybe there will be a remixable Allen Ginsberg party afterwards...

Friday May, 2nd 2008, 7pm
McNally Robinson Bookstore
52 Prince St, just off of Lafayette
FREE!!!

Dulles Rail Revival

The Washington Post reports that The Dulles Rail project, one of the largest transit infrastructure plans in the nation, that has been "on hold" until yesterday when the Federal Transit Administration approved the final design stage.  This decision will expand the Metrorail through Tysons Corner to Dulles International Airport and beyond. 

This is exciting news for everyone in the area.  Paul Ceruzzi, author of Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson's Corner, 1945-2005, commented on the project and it's decade-long history.

I talk about the Dulles rail link as part of a general discussion in the  final chapter of Internet Alley. I also mentioned it in the chapter on Dulles Airport history. There was a plan for a rail (monorail?) as early as
1962(!) but it never got built. Now everyone realizes that it is needed - Dulles is very hard to get to without driving.

Fortunately the land was reserved along the median of the Access Road, so at least that cost is avoided. Nevertheless, in spite of not having to condemn and buy land, the project is very expensive. That is what
caused the Federal government to balk (see below).

Where it gets interesting is that an ideal link to Dulles would go straight there, with only a few stops along the way. The Tysons Corner developers, however, want a lot of stops in Tysons, both to bring people to their buildings; also to get the county give them increased zoning that comes with being close to mass transit ("transit oriented development"). However, these two goals are incompatible: Dulles passengers don't want to ride a "Broadway local" that makes lots of stops: they want to go straight to their plane. Real estate developers don't want to spend money on a rail link that sends all those affluent
people past their buildings without stopping.

The local planners thought they had all this solved, with a set of 4 stops in Tysons and an (eventual) fast link to the airport, but last January, the Federal Transit Agency vetoed it - to everyone's surprise. Without Federal money it cannot be built. Now the Feds have apparently changed their minds.

I my book I tried to get to the basics of this issue, not knowing of course all the drama that would unfold. But I am not al all surprised about this, as I did research the underlying issue, which the local news media have not always done.

Want more?  Listen to the podcast interview with Professor Ceruzzi here.