Door to Door

In ways both glaringly obvious and deeply hidden, thousands, even millions, of miles are embedded in everything we eat, sell, buy, drive, and touch. The capacity to transport a big-screen TV, a vital medicine, or a coffee cup from a factory in Shanghai to a port in California, then on to your local store or front door may be humanity’s most towering achievement. Yet the same system delivers grinding commutes, a death every fifteen minutes, an ER trip every thirteen seconds, and crumbling, overloaded roads, rails, and bridges we can no longer afford to make or fix.Acclaimed journalist Edward Humes unpacks the epic amount of transportation included in a day in the life of a modern American family as he constructs a transportation detective story that reveals the surprising triumphs behind every trip we take and every click we make. Door to Door offers a glimpse of a possible future transformed by such new efficiencies as ride-sharing and robots, while examining a very real present where transportation is one of the few big things individuals can change—where personal choices can have a profound impact as that fork in the road fast approaches.