Journalist Mask’s wonderful and wide-ranging debut investigates the records of avenue addresses and their “strength to determine who counts, who doesn’t, and why.” A brilliant storyteller, Mask describes the “multisensory maps” historical Romans used to navigate their town and the origins of avenue names in medieval England (Frying Pan Alley became domestic to ironmongers; Booty Lane became “named both after bootmakers, Viking booty, or the Booty family”).
Shifting from the historic report to the cutting-edge world, Mask files efforts to assign avenue addresses withinside the slums of Kolkata, India, and takes readers to Japan, in which towns are prepared through blocks and the absence of avenue names makes navigation challenging.
Other subjects encompass the origins of the cutting-edge postal system, virtual addresses of the future, and the problems confronted through homeless humans in an technology while a domestic deal with is “a manner for society to test which you aren't simply someone however the man or woman you assert you are.” Mask’s fluid narration and surprising studies discover the significance of an factor of every day existence that maximum humans take for granted, and he or she profiles a extraordinary array of activists, historians, and artists whose paintings intersects with the evolution and which means of avenue addresses. This evocative records casts its situation in an entire new light.
