David Prerau

Nice little microhistory of the struggle to save the world a little energy and a lot of frustration by making time uniform within time zones. Most countries in the world that aren't equatorial or majority rural/farming use daylight saving time. It makes lots of sense. I hate the day of the change, too, but really it's just not in question, with over 100 years of evidence, that following DST is a net benefit in energy savings and safety increases for all modes of transportation.

Needless to say, pockets of resistance in the US are GOP-led and/or religious nuts. The state of Arizona, in its desert-sunstruck glory, has a point in avoiding extra sunlight hours. Still and all, no matter what, the story of the people who created the concept and rammed it down the throats of the populace is really involving. Not sorry I read it.

The missing stars are all for the repetitive nature of telling a small story like this at too great a length. I think you'd need to be as interested as I am in the strange corners of Time to find it a good read...on balance, I liked it but expect that most others might not.… (mehr)

I fully expected that this book—like daylight saving time itself—would make me want to set my hair on fire. But Prerau managed to write a dispassionate and very detailed history of the biannual lunacy that is DST, from its origins (not what you think!) to the "clock chaos" that was the norm through many decades in the mid-twentieth century as officials at the local, state, and national levels battled over whether and when DST would be implemented. Prerau augments the official debates with a healthy dose of anecdotal accounts from newspapers and other sources, which make for a welcome human element to the story.

My one quibble with the book is that Prerau doesn't treat the effects of DST changes in any great depth, although perhaps it is the case that many of those studies have come out since the original publication of the book. We now know much more about the detrimental nature of sudden time changes; those effects, combined with the general idiocy of such a thing, ought to be enough to begin a strong push once again to get rid of DST once and for all (or, rather, to get rid of the time changes; I would have no objection to permanent DST, it's the switches to which I object).

Anyway, if you want a sense of why we do this ridiculous thing every year, this is an excellent book to start with.… (mehr)