We live in an information age.  Information is cheap.  It's easy and almost always at the tip of our fingers.

With the rise of smartphone technology, there is no more stopping at a gas station to ask for directions or turning the "yellow pages" to find businesses.  Ever since the invention of the headline in a news story, Americans have craved the quick and simple truth.

Authors Emy Louie and Nancy Bolts understand this craving for information.  That's why their book, Fast Trains: America's High Speed Future, is rife with valuable facts about the environmental, economic and lifestyle benefits of high-speed rail.

But why write a book full of information about high-speed rail when this kind of information is almost essentially free?

The answer is that Fast Trains doesn't stop at the information.  It makes an emotional connection with the public through stories about high-speed rail travel.  Emy and Nancy understand Americans' dependency on quick facts, but they also acknowledge the power of a book.

There is something about a book that keeps us grounded and gives us perspective.  It allows us to absorb the motives, experience the hope and get lost in the passion of the authors.  Readers spend plenty of time alone with books. This allows concepts to truly sink in and serves as  an invaluable tool to influence behaviors and emotions.

Authors Emy and Nancy hope to create a message that resonates with the average person.  What better way is there to communicate on a deep level with a mass audience than to write a book?

Fast Trains in particular takes the reader on a journey from cover to cover, making points and tying together themes along the way.  The authors list the benefits of high-speed rail, but they also interconnect them and compellingly display them as exciting and achievable possibilities through entertaining narratives about HSR in other countries. Yes, HSR will help the economy, but the authors hope to convey how all of the benefits improve the quality of life for our future.

"People will learn about benefits," said Emy, "however you have to explain them in such a way that makes them remember, and that is through stories."

Many blogs, websites and books have been written about the benefits of HSR, but Fast Trains is the only book since post 9/11 travels that also incorporates classic archetypal stories about high-speed rail and other forms of transportation.

Searching for facts about the benefits of high-speed rail is certainly not the same as reading Emy and Nancy's book. Some HSR material and books have the tendency is to put in too much technical information that loses the general public.   Even someone who feels he knows all there is to know about the topic will benefit from reading Fast Trains from an emotional standpoint.

"It's like watching a movie," said author Emy Louie, "We have created an emotional set of stories that stick and connect with the American public."

The authors write with contagious passion and hope for an HSR system that cannot be matched by a list of facts. Fast Trains will inform, yes, but most importantly it will instill a desire for HSR throughout the United States.

Don't settle for the search engine.  Experience the heart behind it all.  Be open to the possibilities. Live vicariously through the lives of the people who already enjoy HSR.

Fast Trains is not a book for those who just want to learn about high-speed rail.  It is for those who need to experience it.

-Rachel Lewis, Guest Blogger

Overcrowded highways and post-9/11 air travel woes have become an expected norm in transportation.

We often spend more time in the security and check-in lines at the airport than we do on the actual plane.  What American stuck in a five-lane traffic jam on the I-5 with the kids shouting, “Are we there yet?!” has not thought to herself: “There must be a better way.”

As part of an hour-long interview on Marilyn Shannon’s “Breaking Free” show, Nancy and Emy discuss high-speed rail’s potential to change the traveler’s experience to a pleasant and enjoyable one 

“We have come to accept really being uncomfortable and stressed by our travel,” said Nancy, “[High-speed rail] is such a humane, civilized way of traveling, and it comes out in the book.”

Emy and Nancy’s book, Fast Trains: America’s High-Speed Future, focuses on the importance of the traveler’s experience. “[The book] helps you understand how it is to experience all these different types of high-speed rail across the world,” Emy remarked.  Through compelling testimonies of families traveling on HSR in countries like Japan, the lifestyle benefits come alive for the readers.

“We did it in such a way that we didn’t want to be negative about our current conditions, but they can be so much better,” said Nancy on comparing high-speed rail to other forms of travel.

It’s something to get excited about, not just because of the environmental or economic benefits, but because of the potential to improve the overall experience of travel.  High-speed rail can bear our travel burdens and change the way Americans think of transportation.

Nancy described it best in a few sentences: “The good things about the train are not going to change.  There will be the ability to get up and walk to a place and have something to eat.  Your kids can run to the bathroom when they need to.  There are really wonderful things about trains now.  It’s just the addition of this incredible speed and the convenience of it.”

-Rachel Lewis, guest blogger

Trains are a crucial part of American history and are tied to decades of technological and industrial progression.  In the book, Fast Trains: America’s High Speed Future, the authors Emy Louie and Nancy Bolts say it is as American as baseball or apple pie.

Co-author Bolts, part of a family deeply rooted in the train industry, describes her feelings and experience with trains as pleasurable. “I have a lot of good memories and association with train travel, and I enjoy it,” said Bolts in an interview on Marilyn Shannon’s show, "Breaking Free” Even the English vocabulary is teeming with train related phrases and words such as “caboose,” “on track” and “all aboard.”

However, Louie and Bolts stress that the association with trains shouldn’t stop at the feelings of nostalgia.  “I feel rather terrible that trains nowadays are seen as something nostalgic…when point in fact is we can also look forward,” said Louie.

It is not the end in the great tale of trains.

Emy and Nancy proclaim in their book that there is still much to expect from these once revolutionary and inspiring machines. They provided a new way for people to move more effortlessly across cities, making travel more convenient, thus sparking the Industrial Revolution.

The tendencies of trains to seemingly shorten distances still exist, but it is all contingent upon that one important adjective: fast.

Emy and Nancy’s book, Fast Trains, plunges into this concept, by compellingly sharing train narratives and the undeniable benefits of a high speed rail system throughout the United States.

America is embarking on cutting-edge technology and sustainable innovation and progressing beyond the happy memories of the choo-choo train era.  Imagine the possibilities we have to look forward to in a future in high-speed rail.

As author Emy Louie stated in her interview, “That’s what this book, Fast Trains, is all about.  It’s about looking forward as well as looking back.”

-Rachel Lewis, guest blogger

The thing to remember is that high speed rail can serve the middle class and and is not just for the affluent.  Hardly.  France high speed rail (TGV system) is affordable and makes a profit because the SNCF knows how to price its fares to serve consumer needs.  It's simple: they make regular TGV seats and non-rush hour fares affordable but then charge more on prices during rush hour and for upgraded seating.  It's sort of like paying for a matinee at the movie theater: during non-peak hours (which is most hours throughout the day) you pay a lot less; then during peak hours you pay twenty or thirty percent more.  The movie theaters make a good profit doing this, and so does TGV in France.

So some continue to ask and continue to worry about how will high speed rail pay for itself over the long term and also be affordable to customers?  And now you know.  But this is only one of many methods HSR can turn a pretty profit and be of tremendous benefit to middle class America and everyone who travels the country each day.  Or order your copy of Fast Trains: America;’s High Speed Future -- everything you need to know about the benefits of high speed rail and the fast trains is yours to be had right away.

Nancy Bolts, co-author of Fast Trains: America’s High Speed Future