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Electric Dreams: One Unlikely Team of Kids and the Race to Build the Car of the |
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Electric Dreams: One Unlikely Team of Kids and the Race to Build the Car of the |
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基本信息·出版社：Da Capo Press
·页码：288 页
·出版日期：2004年03月
·ISBN：0786712716
·International Standard Book Number：0786712716
·条形码：9780786712717
·EAN：9780786712717
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语
内容简介 在线阅读本书
When Berkeley graduate Eric Ryan was sent by Teach for America to a hardscrabble high school in the heart of North Carolina's NASCAR country, he didn't count on Harold Miller - a big guy with a big laugh and a tarheel accent as thick as sorghum syrup - sticking his head into his class one morning and announcing, "Hey Mr. Ryan, we're gonna build an electric car." Two regional utilities had challenged a group of elite schools throughout the South to design and build battery-powered electric vehicles to be judged during a final contest at NASCAR's Richmond International Raceway. Although Ryan's underprivileged high school was not on the list, Miller managed to squeak them in. With a Ford Escort rescued from the compacter, a few hundred pounds of scavenged golf cart batteries, a local minor league NASCAR driver as coach, and the local constabulary looking the other way as the reborn "Shocker" began careening over back roads on test runs, the kids get their pasted-together dark horse to the big contest in Richmond. Electric Dreams offers drama built on marvelous small-town characters, and a story of never-say-die invention which would make North Carolina's other pioneers, the Wright Brothers, proud.
作者简介 Caroline Kettlewell is the author of Electric Dreams and of the critically praised memoir, Skin Game. She is a regular contributor of feature stories to The Washington Post and has written on topics from a wilderness survival class to a competition to design and build solar-powered homes to the roof-rack as lifestyle statement. She has been a guest on The Diane Rehm Show, New York and Company, Voices in the Family on Philadelphia public radio station WHYY, and at numerous conferences, and her work has been included in two anthologies: Tales out of School: Contemporary Writers on their Student Years (Beacon Press, 2001); and Reflections on Anthropology: A Four-Field Reader (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
专业书评 From Publishers WeeklyIn 1995 the Virginia Power company hosted a competition for high schools in the mid-Atlantic region to convert conventional automobiles into electric vehicles (EVs). As it happened, out of habitual disregard for impoverished Northampton County in North Carolina, the company nearly forgot to invite the eventual winners. Aided by a handful of phenomenal teachers, some uncommonly bright and determined students and a pervading regional interest in automobiles fueled by NASCAR, the county was able to outperform schools of far greater pedigree and budget. Of course, the widespread, reflexive negative expectations provided no small motivation to the kids of Northampton County. They mastered problems involving electrical wiring, battery longevity, welding and aerodynamics in converting a 1985 Ford Escort to the aptly named?in more ways than one?"Shocker." A resident of Richmond, Va., Kettlewell (Skin Game) brings just the right regional flavor to a can't-miss true story reminiscent of the movie Breaking Away. The word "inspirational" is applied to too many books, but it comfortably fits this one, with its genuinely likable cast of unlikely achievers. This is essential reading for any serious environmentalist, as it makes the case that EVs might play even in the conservative South. Even more, it contains profound lessons that everyone involved in the educational system would do well to heed.
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