What We're Reading: Edward

Routes of Man: how roads are changing the world and the way we live today

by Ted Conover


The Roman Empire had 53,000 miles of road.
China hopes to have 53,000 miles of highway by 2020.

In 2002 China had 2.6% of the world's automobiles but had 21% of the world's fatal automobile accidents.



Like many agents of change, roads can have both positive and negative consequences. Paved roads allowed the Roman Empire to extend it's power to the ends of the known world. But the roads of the Aztec Empire allowed Cortes to quickly capture their capital. History is filled with mentions of roads: the Cherokee "Trail of Tears", the Oregon Trail, the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Roads can also entertain us: Broadway, the Strip of Las Vegas, Atlantic City's Boardwalk. Conover uses six road trips to explore all that we know about roads. The beginnings of a transcontinental road in South America, allows both ecotourists to visit the rain forest and the illegal cutting of mahogany trees. In Africa, Conover travels with truckers who get goods from the coastal cities to the people of the interior. Did these same truck drivers help to spread AIDS? On the West Bank, he sees how roads are used by both Palestinians and Israelis. Conover travels a frozen river that serves as a road in wintertime Northern India. His road trip with a Chinese car club exposes the frightening cost of road travel in China. Lagos, Nigeria is his last road trip. Conover experiences the tumult of a road system in the developing world's megacities. How will toady's roads help to determine the future of our civilization and the planet?
Good read for the armchair traveller.