cover image THE GRID AND THE VILLAGE

THE GRID AND THE VILLAGE

Stephen Doheny-Farina, . . Yale Univ., $26.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-300-08977-6

Whether he is writing about the power grids that connect and illuminate our homes, the media and telecommunications webs that on any given news day put us all on the same page, or the social connections of family and neighborhood we rely on for support, Doheny-Farina (The Wired Neighborhood) provokes a startling awareness, or as he terms it, a "mindfulness," of what we have and how easily it can all be lost or regained, either through complacency or abrupt disaster. He strikes a deeply personal note in this blending of top-drawer social criticism with a gripping firsthand account of the 1998 ice storm that shut down parts of New York, New England and Canada. On its most basic level, this is Doheny-Farina's account of how that disaster changed him, his family and his neighbors in his hometown of Potsdam, N.Y., of 23 days without the power and communications grids we all take for granted and "the emergence of a community that filled the resulting void." But this book's great achievement rests not only on the author's sympathetic storyteller's eye, but also on his strikingly unique selection and ordering of information. His chapters are a weave of storm narrative, vignettes on the origin and evolution of the modern-day grid around Potsdam, and smart and notably self-aware riffs on the media's dubious role in disaster, this book being one example. The author's technique is as eye-opening as the sudden and complete leveling of a power grid by sheets of ice. (Sept.)

Forecast:While smartly written by a professor and published under the Yale imprimatur, this is a trade book, and one that, marketed properly, could find many sympathetic readers this winter. With rolling blackouts a recent, much hyped threat, grid issues have come enough to the fore that this media-savvy book fills a niche.