Includes bibliographical references (pages 509-523) and index.

Out of the earth -- Waterworks -- Food and farming -- Oil and gas -- Power plants -- The power grid -- Communications -- On the road -- The railroad -- Bridges and tunnels -- Aviation -- Shipping -- Wastes and recycling -- Afterword: The postindustrial landscape. Covering agriculture, resources, energy, communication, transportation, manufacturing, and waste, this is the "Book of Everything" for the industrial landscape. The objects that fill our everyday environment are streetlights, railroad tracks, antenna towers, highway overpasses, power lines, satellite dishes, and thousands of other manufactured items, many of them so familiar we hardly notice them. Larger and more exotic facilities have transformed vast tracts of the landscape: coal mines, nuclear power plants, grain elevators, oil refineries, and steel mills, to name a few.