An informative, infectious introduction to the joys of electric vehicles.
Ditch your gas guzzler and rev up your electric car, urges this gung-ho manifesto.
Sydney, a technology trainer and editor of the Sustainable Transport Club Newsletter, sidesteps discussion of climate change from automotive greenhouse-gas emissions and instead bases his brief about electric vehicles on the prospect of rising gasoline prices. After a wide-ranging, cogent but somewhat disorganized look at the spiraling costs of oil production, he turns to electric vehicles as a surefire liberation from “the tyranny of the price at the pump.” His statistics make an eye-opening case for the cost advantages of electric cars; the high sticker price, he says, is balanced by superefficient electric motors with very low fuel costs. Much of the book is a love letter to the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid vehicle, which has the range of a conventional car, gets up to 1,700 miles on three gallons of gas, deploys the torque of a Camaro and holds its own in a drag race with a Porsche and a Mustang. Sydney acknowledges the pitfalls of EVs, which require a paradigm shift from an “ICE [internal combustion engine] mindset” to an “EV mindset” of constrained mobility that, he makes clear, represents a significant lifestyle commitment. EV drivers, he counsels, must be pervasively aware of weather, terrain, traffic and other factors that shorten range and may need to own or rent ICE vehicles for long hauls. He narrates several California road trips whose itineraries are strategically planned around access to still-rare—and slow—public charging stations. Overall, the book’s prose is rambling and occasionally awkward. However, Sydney’s technical explanations are lucid, and he brings a wealth of understanding and contagious enthusiasm to his subject that make the book an absorbing read for gearheads and novices alike.
An informative, infectious introduction to the joys of electric vehicles.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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