Book Report: Manhattan Atmospheres

NYC's Washington Bridge Apartments were built over an expressway. This idea was brilliant: let humans use space now wasted on cars. This idea was stupid: we weren't as good at channeling fumes as we thought we were—or on budgeting big apartment buildings. Cost overruns meant that we didn't even set up some fumes-channeling measures that we could have. So these apartments had bad air and were noisy.

That's an interesting little story, and I told you that much without once mentioning the underlying ontological whatsit. I read through 50 pages of academic writing for that little story. I was interested in that little story, and would like to read about other things in a similar vein… but not interested enough to keep slogging through this book.