Embedded Energy in Buildings

By Gilbert Woolley

 

For the past 30 years we have been harangued and implored to reduce use of energy and raw materials: drive less, turn down the thermostat, insulate; recycle paper, cans and bottles; use renewable materials and fuels. These are all necessary and beneficial. But there is one major use of energy that has received little attention: the energy “embedded” in construction materials. This is the energy used to turn wet clay into hard baked bricks, limestone into lime and cement, to melt and process steel, copper and aluminum used in a building. The raw materials for roofing shingles, vinyl siding, cable insulation and plastic piping is derived from oil or natural gas. Even the insulation added to reduce energy losses has an energy content.

To this must be added the energy used to mine the clay, lime and sand, to harvest trees and to transport these materials from mine, quarry and forest to the factories where they are processed, and finally to the construction site.  For a typical house in Massachusetts, this embedded energy may exceed the energy used to heat, cool and light it over a fifteen year period. So, how can some of this energy be saved?

There are significant differences in the energy embedded in various materials. In general, lighter construction embeds less energy than more solid masonry construction.  However, masonry has a much longer potential life and has other advantages, like rot and insect resistance.  In poor countries materials salvaged from demolition of buildings are often recycled, but in the US the cost of labor to separate the wood, cables and pipes from the concrete, plaster and bricks is usually greater than the value of the materials salvaged and the demolition debris is hauled away to a landfill, adding transportation energy and compounding another dilemma of modern life: shortage of landfill space.

The optimal way to save embedded energy (and in the long run to save money) is to make buildings last longer.  Often, demolition is not necessary.  Rooms can be added to houses; factories and warehouses are turned into office space; pricey condos and apartments; unused churches are transformed into restaurants and schools into apartments.  Such re-use by the private sector is usually motivated by cost savings. Local examples show how apparently unpromising buildings can be “recycled”. The computer design and prototype manufacturing workshops of Digital Equipment Corporation were located in a 150-year-old mill in Maynard. This mill was fitted out with the latest methods of communication, including fiber optics cables throughout the million square foot, 21 building complex.  The old windows were double glazed, air-conditioning added and roofs well insulated.  Just over the border from Newton in Watertown, “HighTech” Boston Scientific has refurbished an old water mill on the Charles River.  These old buildings are often better built and have finer esthetics than recent construction.

If you are planning remodeling or an addition to your home, ask your architect to incorporate the existing building into the new design. A building is just a shell and the conveniences of modern life can be added to it. In Europe and Asia, buildings are still in active use that are 500, 1000 and more, years old. Even in the US buildings more than 200 years old can be found at many older universities, such as Harvard, and in historic sites like Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. There are many examples of imaginative use of old buildings, impressive structures that escaped being been torn down in the name of “urban renewal”.

Gilbert Woolley is a retired engineer and longtime member of the Sierra Club.

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/environmentpage.html

Burn Fat, Not Fuel!

By Molly Schaeffer

 

 

Cycling 6 miles to and from work instead of driving could burn 15 to 20 lbs. of fat each year.

Pollution Facts:

·      60% of car emissions pollution occurs in the first few minutes, before pollution control devices can work effectively.

·      Approximately 40% of all car trips are less than 2 miles.  Biking (10 minutes) or walking (30 minutes) instead of driving, would keep about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air. (World Watch Institute)

·      Motor vehicle emissions represent 31% of total carbon dioxide, 81% of carbon monoxide, and 49% of nitrogen oxides released in the U.S.

Fat Facts:

·      In the U.S. 16% of children ages 6 to 19 years are overweight.

·      In Holland 11% of children ages 7 to 11 years and 8% ages 13 to 17 years old are overweight.

·      64.5% of U.S. adults, age 20+ years old, are overweight and 30.5% are obese.

As a bicycle commuter and member of the Newton Bicycle Pedestrian Task Force, I have a strong personal interest in making Newton more “bicycle friendly”.  My co-workers echo the findings of a 1995 Rodale Press survey, which found that 40% of U.S. adults said they would commute by bike if safe facilities were available.

Recently I talked with Anne C. Lusk, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist at Harvard’s School of Public Health, with 25 years of experience working with communities to create bicycle paths, including the Stowe (VT) Recreation path.  She once bicycled 1000 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C. to explore the route for the East Coast Greenway.  Dr. Lusk is writing a book, “Designing a Healthy America: Bicycle Paths, Parks, and Streets”.

Dr. Lusk maintains that American communities should provide European Cycle Tracks so that cycling and walking could be part of the solution to the growing American obesity crisis.  By separating vehicular traffic from pedestrian and bicycle traffic (and from other wheeled, non-motorized traffic such as in line skating), walking and cycling become safer and, therefore, viable, options for the entire community.

By building safer cycling facilities alongside, but separate from, roads, bicyclist fatalities were reduced by 64% in Germany and by 57% in Holland between 1975 and 2001.  In the U.S. today, a bicyclist is twice as likely to be killed as a German bicyclist and over three times as likely to be killed as a Dutch bicyclist

 

Dr. Lusk maintains that American communities should provide European Cycle Tracks so that cycling and walking could be part of the solution to the growing American obesity crisis.  By separating vehicular traffic from pedestrian and bicycle traffic (and from other wheeled, non-motorized traffic such as in line skating), walking and cycling become safer and, therefore, viable, options for the entire community.

Today children no longer ride bikes or walk to school and adults spend hard-earned money on memberships to gyms they drive to where they spend scarce time exercising instead of incorporating exercise into their daily routines.  We drive everywhere and make many highly polluting short trips. Then we complain about the traffic.   Many European countries explicitly chose to create and improve mobility opportunities for children and seniors in the 1970s.  During the same time, the U.S. chose, instead, to provide more facilities for cars and trucks.

The development of bike paths does not happen spontaneously in an urbanized environment. It needs catalysts. The extremely popular Minuteman Bikeway from Cambridge to Bedford was a government project. It connects several local communities on an old railway bed that leads to a national park. In many communities, citizens have to organize at the grassroots level or local politicians have to lead the way to get things started.

In Newton, we already have a bike path along the Charles River. However, there are no safe connector paths to it, so cyclists need to ride in the street to get there, making it inaccessible to the vast majority of cyclists (children, senior citizens, occasional cyclists, those with impaired mobility) who are unable or afraid to ride on the road.

Dr. Lusk indicated that funding is available for creating cycling facilities, but that first there should be a consensus about what needs to be built, and where.  She said: “The most far reaching thing would be to build European Cycle Tracks in Newton.  You can’t have a system with short sections of paths that aren’t connected.  You need an interconnected system for all people, not just fearless road cyclists.  Pedestrians, vehicles and bikes should be separated.”

How do we get started?  According to Dr. Lusk, “It’s easy to come together for a common cause, but people need to know that they can effect change.  Even in Chicago and New York they’re doing bike things.  Boston isn’t doing 1/10th as much as Chicago.”

I can imagine European Style Cycle Tracks connecting Newton’s Village Centers, the Charles River Bike Path, MBTA stations, schools, and on Beacon Street leading into Boston.  Please share your ideas about this with the Task Force.

Molly Schaeffer, a Chestnut Hill resident, commutes to her job as a systems consultant on an aging Bridgestone bike. She can be reached at mailto:mhschaeffer@alum.mit.edu.  

Artificial turf: Solution or problem?

By Gilbert Woolley/ Special To The Tab

 

Astroturf, the original brand of artificial turf, was used for the first time in 1968 in the

Houston Astrodome baseball stadium. Many indoor and some outdoor fields were

covered in Astroturf, but the surface was well described by a critic as “carpet on

concrete” and it fell out of favor.

 

In the early 21st century several brands of artificial turf have overcome some of

limitations of Astroturf and other early products.

 

Construction varies in detail, but the newer products try to produce a playing surface

that is close to that of natural turf. This is achieved by adding around an inch and a

half of a resilient material, sometimes mixed with sand, around the synthetic “grass

blades,” which can be made of nylon, polyethylene or polypropylene (which in turn can

be made from recycled plastic. The resilient material is, typically, ground up waste

rubber from worn out tires, or in one case, the soles of athletic shoes.

It has been estimated that an average soccer or football field of artificial turf uses

45,000 recycled tires that might otherwise take up space in a landfill or an illegal waste

site. About 250 million scrap tires are generated in the US every year. Today 80

percent are ground up and recycled: 30 percent mixed with asphalt for highways; 30

percent mixed with plastics for molded products which do not need to have a good

appearance; and 15 percent are used for athletic surfaces, including artificial turf.

Artificial turf is low maintenance, and requires no herbicides, pesticides, or watering,

and no need for reseeding. The most important advantage, with respect to the

management of the field, is that it can be played on every day, winter and summer. It

doesn’t get bald patches and doesn’t get muddy when it rains.

 

Disadvantages are that, in summer, artificial turf gets much hotter than natural turf, but

this problem is not so critical in Massachusetts as some places. Also, dealing with

animal droppings and human “body fluids” is more difficult. On natural turf, there is

natural “treatment” from bacteria in the soil, but on artificial turf solids must be

frequently removed and the surface sanitized. The “sanitizer” must be harmless to the

skin of players.

 

The improved artificial turf has been widely accepted in the US but In Europe the

response has been mixed. FIFA, the international organization governing soccer has

approved Field Turf, one of the newer brands, for all games, except for World Cup

tournaments. (The English governing body for soccer approves it for practice but not

for league games while the Scottish Premier League banned artificial turf for

competition matches in 2005.)

 

The trade association of natural turf providers claims that ground up tires are

hazardous and supports this claim by pointing out that tires are banned from many

landfills. But, in fact, the reasons tires are banned from landfills is that they are a

breeding ground for mosquitoes, create a risk for serious fires that are hard to

extinguish, and that tires are unstable in landfills.

 

Of course, just because turf is “natural” does not mean it is environmentally harmless.

Large amounts of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides are sometimes used to keep a

field in first class shape. Newton practices Integrated Pest Management, which

reduces the use of these products significantly, but maintaining the fields may still

require the use of materials that we would prefer to keep out of storm drains.

If gas or diesel powered machines are used for mowing, or to spread fertilizer, that

has environmental impact, as does the use of large quantities of water, usually

drinking quality, to keep the grass healthy.

 

It is most likely that, at end of life, the artificial turf may be too heavily soiled to be

economically recycled and will need to be disposed of in a landfill. This is where the

bulk of the material, the rubber, would have gone if not used for turf. But it is now in a

form much preferred by landfills to intact tires. The rubber will not be broken down by

microorganisms in the landfill or dissolved by water and will be there almost “forever”,

like most of the inorganic materials that go into landfills today.

The existing playing field at Newton South High School, where there is interest in

using artificial turf, is large and not perfectly level.

 

It has bare spots, especially around the basketball court. It does become muddy in wet

weather. It is liberally covered with goose droppings. The geese use the area for

feeding. They dig in their beaks to extract worms and grubs. If the grass were

replaced by artificial turf, the geese would soon learn that there was nothing to eat in

the area.

 

This writer’s opinion is that there are no heavy “environmental” issues involved, and

that the decision to use, or not use, artificial turf should be based on cost over (say) a

ten-year period. Suppliers claim a much longer life. It may be economical to use

artificial turf only in areas of heavy use like the basketball diamond.

 

Gilbert Woolley is a retired engineer. He has been a very active member of the Sierra

Club since 1971, and he served on the Sierra Club National Toxics Committee for six

years.

 

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/tabarchive.asp.

Making Newton more bike-friendly

By Gilbert Woolley/ Special To The Tab

 

Bicycle paths encourage people who are afraid to ride on the roads to ride for pleasure and business. Riding a bicycle provides healthy exercise without straining the heart and the rider is closer to nature and to other people than when driving. Using a cycle for day-to-day business reduces congestion on the roads and contributes to reducing oil imports, global warming and smog. Bicycle trails are also suitable for easy cross-country skiing.

Newton is not well provided with bicycle paths. The most interesting path passing through the city is the Charles River Bikeway, which goes from the Esplanade in Boston, to Waltham, along one, or sometimes both, sides of the Charles River. It is paved all the way, although full of potholes in places. It is managed, by the Mass. Dept. of Conservation and Recreation.

Although not designated a bicycle path, the “carriage road” on Commonwealth Avenue provides an outstanding bicycle route from Boston College almost to Route 128 and this could be the link to join various shorter trails. Cyclists can, of course, ride on the city’s highways and streets, but for this lifelong cyclist, the main obstacle to cycling on public roads is fear.

A spectacular example, which shows how people will use bicycles when a safe route is provided, is the Minuteman Bikeway, built on a defunct railroad bed from the Alewife ’T’ station in Cambridge, through downtown Lexington, to Bedford. This trail attracts over two million users each year, At times, this “Bikeway” is used too much, not only by cyclists, but also by skate boarders, rollerbladers and people pushing baby carriages. In areas of heavy use it would be helpful if these users could be separated. In the nearby towns of Hudson. Framingham and Natick, other unused rail tracks are being turned into bicycle trails.

Disused railroad beds provide ideal routes for bicycle paths. They are almost flat and there is conflict with automobile traffic only at highway crossings. Newton has an almost unused line from Newton Highlands to Newton Upper Falls and on to Needham. This line crosses the Charles River and Route 128 by bridges and would avoid the cyclist-hazardous intersection of Highland Avenue and Route 128. Other potential bicycle routes are the Sudbury and Cochituate aqueducts. Cycle routes could also be signed on little used streets in order to link cyclable trails in public parks and on conservation land. Proposals to create cycle trails often run into opposition from abutters, who fear that criminals will use it to gain access to their property. This has not proved to be a problem. Criminals, in this country at least, rarely ride bicycles! There has also been a fear that a trail would reduce property values, but realtors report, for example, that abutting the Minuteman trail actually adds value to properties.

Making Newton more bicycle-friendly could provide an opportunity for volunteers to work with the Parks and Recreation Department surveying possible cycle routes. The cost to the city would be minimal. Marking a street as a “bicycle path” gives people confidence that it goes somewhere and that it’s OK to use it.

Bicycle trails do more than provide access to local stores, libraries and schools. An ambitious national organization, Rails to Trails, promotes conversion of abandoned railroad beds to bicycle paths, and has had considerable success. The East Coast Greenway has succeeded in marking a bicycle path from Canada to Florida, and every year, the Greenway adds more “auto free” miles.

Gilbert Woolley, a retired engineer, has been a very active member of the Sierra Club since 1971, He has led Youth Hostel bicycle tours in Europe.

Green meets blue in an urban environment

By Pallavi Mande / Special To The Tab

 

While many people are aware of the importance of reducing the environmental impacts of new development on green, open land, there is less emphasis placed on the environmental impacts of development in cities. Yet the relationship between the environment and development is equally important in urban areas. The impacts of urbanization on water are pervasive. Because little rainwater can penetrate the impervious surfaces that cities create, those surfaces deplete groundwater reserves, which in turn depletes the amount of water in our rivers.

“CRWA, known for its work in protecting, preserving and enhancing the Charles River and its watershed, is creating a new approach to urban redevelopment,” said Bob Zimmerman, executive director of Charles River Watershed Association. “We want to build ‘blue cities’ – cities that are designed to sustain and restore water resources.”

City infrastructure, comprised of roads, buildings, sidewalks, parking lots, and more, is often designed without taking into consideration the natural flow of water, which often aggravates flooding problems. Because there is nowhere else for water to go, urban rivers are overwhelmed with polluted runoff during rainstorms, exacerbating flooding and pollution problems in the river.

“Urban redevelopment projects present tremendous opportunities to improve the environment, reverse degradation, and correct mistakes,” said Kate Bowditch, senior environmental scientist and project manager at CRWA. “The most successful urban renewal incorporates environmental restoration, because of the proven economic benefits as well as because it generates widespread public support.”

Existing policy and regulations already require redevelopment projects to reduce polluted runoff, increase groundwater recharge, and conserve water. In many cases, especially in Boston, where Mayor Thomas Menino and the Boston Redevelopment Authority are adopting Green Building standards, redevelopment projects are also adopting practices such as green roofs, water reuse, and incorporation of public open space.

“While these building-scale efforts are a huge step in the right direction, there is much more that can be done at the neighborhood level,” said Bowditch. “Redevelopment provides the opportunity to encourage developers to look for ways to participate in improving the neighborhood, and can leverage other public and private investments as well.” She added that larger infrastructure improvements to the water and sewer systems, transportation systems, open space and pedestrian amenities, and the urban ecosystem should all be considered whenever large-scale urban development is occurring.

As a case in point, over the next 50 years Harvard University intends to develop over 200 acres it now owns in North Allston to create a new campus south of the Charles. The project presents an opportunity to change current development practices, and create a new approach to planning that is environmentally sensitive and “water friendly”.

CRWA has developed partnerships with the participants involved with the Harvard project- Harvard University, the BRA and the residents of the North Allston community. As the Institutional Master Plan for the new campus begins to take shape, CRWA is working closely with each participant group to further the goal of environmental sustainability.

A parallel opportunity exists on Newton’s border, as Boston College (BC) plans to develop the 43 acres of land in Brighton that it purchased in 2004 from the Archdiocese of Boston. Like all colleges in Boston, BC must participate in the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s institutional master planning process, which requires the school to keep a master plan on file with the city. Changes to the plan, such as major development on new land, require not only city approval but also neighborhood participation. Thus, there exists a tremendous opportunity for large institutional development projects to incorporate measures for environmental restoration and resource conservation. This will have both short-term benefits and will help to achieve sustainability in the longer term.

One of the country’s first watershed organizations, CRWA was formed in 1965 in response to public concern about the declining condition of the Charles River. CRWA has figured prominently in major clean-up and watershed protection efforts that have dramatically improved the health of the Charles.

Pallavi Mande is an urban restoration specialist with the Charles River Watershed Association. 

 

Mega-malls in your future?

By Rachael Lax/ Special To The Tab

 

Imagine spending the weekend at a five-star hotel powered entirely by renewable energy, dining at top-end restaurants in the glow of solar-powered light, and passing a perfect spring day kayaking along a calm river running through the Adirondacks. Sound like an environmentalist’s dream vacation? Probably not, if this getaway is Robert Congel’s proposed mega-mall, DestiNY U.S.A.

Scheduled to begin construction this summer in Syracuse, N.Y., the $20 billion “retail-and entertainment complex” of 1,000 shops and restaurants, 80,000 hotel rooms and a 40,000 seat arena will be powered completely by alternative energy sources. Congel envisions this shopping haven to be the world’s biggest attraction, bringing in millions of people from around the globe. Not only will guests find all the top-of-the-line shops and major chains, they will also enjoy the biosphere-produced spring-like climate, an artificial mountain peak and a river for kayaking. Moreover, not a single tractor or crane will use fossil fuels in the construction of the complex. Although it sounds like a valiant effort to model and promote mass use of renewable energy, DestiNY may actually be as false as its faux ponds and mountain peaks.

How environment-friendly can a mall really be?

For starters, by encouraging and embracing consumerism, DestiNY defies the environmentalists’ motto: “Recycle, Reduce, Reuse.” Regardless of its energy sources, a mall is a mall; its primary purpose is to attract consumers to consume more material goods, which will therefore pollute the environment, epitomizing and magnifying the problems of our growing disposable culture. Furthermore, DestiNY is boasted as a post-fossil-fuel project and is expected to attract millions of visitors, but ironically, the only means of transportation to upstate N.Y. is fossil-fuel powered cars and planes, further encouraging fossil-fuel use and pollution. And doesn’t the term environment-friendly imply some appreciation for nature? DestiNY will be located in the Adirondacks, one of the most naturally beautiful regions of the United States, yet visitors to the resort will be encapsulated in a fake climate, encouraged to appreciate only the synthetic mountain and artificial river.

Congel, a commercial real-estate developer, is currently owner of 25 malls. He is a businessman, not an environmentalist, and his motives are suspect. He claims that DestiNY, which will be bigger and better than Disney, will save upstate New York’s declining economy. The locals are skeptical, like the architect who said: “He is hardly interested in the environment or the well-being of anything in the city aside from his financial interests.” Because Congel is expected to receive significant government funding and enormous tax breaks from the state, his professed concern for our planet looks more like a thinly disguised effort to exploit growing public environmental concern.

On the other hand, perhaps DestiNY offers a unique opportunity for public education. Promoting alternate energy sources through a multibillion-dollar project will surely bring environmental issues to the public’s attention. And beyond merely modeling the use of alternative power sources, the project has enormous potential to encourage mechanisms for mitigating the destructive effects of consumerism. Could there in fact be ways to meld consumerism and concern for the environment? Imagine: electronic retail stores that encourage trading in old items to be refurbished and resold; clothing stores that promote clothes drives, supermarkets that sponsor food drives, and DestiNY could choose to give an enormous boost to the use of shopping bags, shipping boxes and receipts made from recycled materials. In theory, a mega-mall could stimulate change, but DestiNY U.S.A., regardless of its proclaimed virtue, may sadly be just another example of unsustainable growth.

Rachael Lax, Wesleyan University 2006, is a Newton North graduate. A psychology major, she spent this past summer working as an intern for the Newton Office of Volunteer Services and volunteered for the Green Decade Coalition.

Life BAC (Before air conditioning)

By Diana Muir/ Special To The Tab

 

Our air conditioning is on the blink. I am told that there was a time when people used to live without central air conditioning. Really. If you look closely as you walk around Newton, you can still see the physical indications of that long-ago era, like an archaeologist who discerns the lifestyle of an ancient civilization in the contour of a hill or the shape of a stone.

There is a house, just a block from ours, that still has its old sleeping porch. Sleeping porches, built upstairs, off a bedroom, used to be common. Screened from floor to ceiling on three sides, they cooled much faster than the house, letting you have a comfortable night’s sleep even after the hottest days.

Awnings were another effective trick. Shading southern and western windows with custom-tailored canvas reduced the solar-heating effect of the afternoon sun. Only a handful of houses in Newton still have their awnings.

The windows themselves used to be left open on summer nights. This might have been a security issue since housebreaking, as a profession, is even older than air conditioning repair. Double-hung windows on the first floor were fitted with little brass knobs that slid into place to prevent the window from being open wider than about six inches.  With the windows open on the first floor, and a whole house fan pulling hot air out through the attic, houses were kept reasonably comfortable in hot weather.

Now that houses have air conditioning, the old round of opening the windows wide in the early morning and rushing from room to room to close them quickly when a thunderstorm blows up is too much trouble. The little brass sliding knobs sit unused, as obsolete as the haylofts in Newton’s old carriage houses now that only horseless carriages are parked downstairs.

Newton homes retain numerous vestigial elements, reminders of how life used to be. A few of them speak to ecological adaptations of an earlier generation that in some ways walked more lightly on the earth.

When we bought our house, outside the kitchen door there was what looked like a subterranean garbage can.  Its lid was level with the ground and you stepped on a flange to lift the lid. This was the receptacle for a pig route.

Newton used to have a contract with a pig farmer. Housewives or maids would step on the flange and tip the day’s potato peels and stale bread into the can, which was underground to retard spoilage by keeping the scraps cool. Collectors went from house to house, and drove the kitchen waste to a farm.

I once knew where the farm that turned Newton’s leftover oatmeal into pork chops was located. I seem to recall that it was in Weston, the contrast between a commercial hog-raising outfit that must have been smelly and noisy, and the manicured million-dollar lawns of Weston today is rather funny. The pig farm needed to be reasonably close to the collection route, else the transportation costs would have exceeded the values of the potato peels.

Near the pig-route can there was a rotating clothesline held erect by a huge concrete pyramid. During one period of save-the-planet fervor I hung laundry outside. That, of course, takes time. Plus, sometimes it rains. I haven’t hung laundry on a line in years.

It is hot in the house now, despite the fact that I have every window open. It would be cooler if I set up a few fans, just until the repairman gets here, but I don’t own any fans. I sent them to college when our youngest moved into the freshman dorm at Barnard one hot September. Brooks Hall, a truly beautiful building, was built so long ago that the top floors were designed as maid’s rooms. Young ladies took their maids to college in those days. The wiring was not designed to support air conditioning. It is now being renovated to accommodate a generation that arrives at college without personal ladies’ maids, but with the expectation that air conditioning comes standard.

Which is pretty much true. And which is, of course, one of the reasons why our climate is changing and why our summers are hotter than the summers of our childhood were.

 

When I was a kid in Connecticut, it was common to hear people say that it was not really necessary to install air conditioning because it was only uncomfortably hot one, maybe two, weeks a year. This was not merely an excuse for not spending the money; it was actually true.  Then we all got air conditioning.  And now every summer it is so hot that we actually need it. We have met the enemy, and it is us.

Diana Muir is an award winning Newton author whose most celebrated works explore the landscape and history of New England. Her book ‘Reflections in Bullough’s Pond,’ received the Massachusetts Book Award as the best non-fiction book of 2000.