Books about Transit from Amazon.com

Transit Maps of the World is the first and only comprehensive collection of historic and current maps of every rapid-transit system on earth. Using glorious, colorful graphics, Mark Ovenden traces the history of mass transit-including rare and historic maps, diagrams, and photographs, some available for the first time since their original publication. Transit Maps is the graphic designerÂ’s new bible, the transport enthusiastÂ’s dream collection, and a coffee-table essential for everyone whoÂ’s ever traveled in a city..
Price: $13.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book covers complete delineations of all the major transits - conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition - that occur between transiting Sun, Moon and all planets to each planet in the natal chart and the Ascendant and Midheaven, as well as complete delineations of each planet transiting each house of the natal chart. These 720 lucid delineations are full of insight for both the professional astrologer and the beginner..
Price: $19.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women--seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal--becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.

"Engrossing, masterly. . . . Combines the satisfaction of a family saga . . . with a highly structured plot reminiscent of Greek tragedy."-- Gail Godwin, The New York Times Book Review

"A wonderfully mysterious book. . . . Both plot and characters are many layered. Unforgettably rich."-- Anne Tyler, The New Republic

"Luminous. . . . Almost without flaw. Aphoristic and iridescent, her language turns paragraphs into events."-- Webster Schott, The Washington Post Book World.
Price: $1.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Drivers in the nation's capital face a host of hazards: high-speed traffic circles, presidential motorcades, jaywalking tourists, and bewildering signs that send unsuspecting motorists from the Lincoln Memorial into suburban Virginia in less than two minutes. And parking? Don't bet on it unless you're in the fast lane of the Capital Beltway during rush hour.

Little wonder, then, that so many residents and visitors rely on the Washington Metro, the 106-mile rapid transit system that serves the District of Columbia and its inner suburbs. In the first comprehensive history of the Metro, Zachary M. Schrag tells the story of the Great Society Subway from its earliest rumblings to the present day, from Arlington to College Park, Eisenhower to Marion Barry.

Unlike the pre--World War II rail systems of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the Metro was built at a time when most American families already owned cars, and when most American cities had dedicated themselves to freeways, not subways. Why did the nation's capital take a different path? What were the consequences of that decision?

Using extensive archival research as well as oral history, Schrag argues that the Metro can be understood only in the political context from which it was born: the Great Society liberalism of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. The Metro emerged from a period when Americans believed in public investments suited to the grandeur and dignity of the world's richest nation. The Metro was built not merely to move commuters, but in the words of Lyndon Johnson, to create "a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community."

Schrag scrutinizes the project from its earliest days, including general planning, routes, station architecture, funding decisions, land-use impacts, and the behavior of Metro riders. The story of the Great Society Subway sheds light on the development of metropolitan Washington, postwar urban policy, and the promises and limits of rail transit in American cities.

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Price: $18.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What was the original name of the Place de la Concorde? Why was the Tuileries palace so called and when was it destroyed? Who built the Palais Royal?

Find the answers to these questions and many others in this fascinating new book, which gives you the history behind the names of all the Metro stations in Paris. Arnold Delaney's text is full of illuminating insights into hidden corners of the history of the world's most elegant city. The text is complemented by color photography that takes a slightly idiosyncratic look at the city as well as giving a taste of the quintessential design and feel of the Metro system.

"Not only travelers but Parisians will have the Paris Metro explained by perusing this book in ways they never have before... An absolutely essential guide to really knowing Paris." -Robert Cole author of A Traveller's History of Paris.
Price: $7.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Equal parts hilarious, poignant, and heartbreaking, The Subway Chronicles is a journey into New YorkÂ’s underground with some of todayÂ’s most loved writers

Some seven million people board the New York City subway every day, each one with a story to tell. The Subway Chronicles collects twenty-seven of the tales, dramas and comedies that unfold during the daily commute From the “mole people” living in the subway tunnels, to the transit employees working behind the scenes, to the locals and tourists riding shoulder-to- shoulder in harmony, discord, or indifference, The Subway Chronicles offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on this most public of spaces.

Prominent New York writers weigh in:
* Jonathan Lethem confesses his childhood subway sins
* Colson Whitehead offers mass-transit tips for newcomers to the city
* Francine Prose recalls the thrill and apprehension of riding alone as a teenage girl
* Calvin Trillin pokes fun at the classic New York tendency to be skeptical about everything
* Stan Fischler delights in memories of riding the open-air train cars to Coney Island as a boy

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Reveals Saturn's useful and developmental influence in our lives. Erin Sullivan gives a thorough account of the astrology, mythology, and psychology of Saturn's role as the source of divine discontent Saturn assists the modern hero and heroine, during its transit around the zodiac, by destroying the old and outmoded within, and throwing us periodically into chaos, which invariably generates a creative transformation of purpose in our lives..
Price: $13.92 [Notify me when price goes down.]