by KYW's Dr. Marciene Mattleman

In Microtrends, the Small Forces Behind the Big Changes, Mark Penn, a well known pollster, with his co-author E. Kinney Zalesne draws a sometimes amusing and sometimes sad picture of society as most of us know it.

The section on Work Life is a good example, discussing one of our most commonplace activities—the 150 million of us who get up and go to work each day.

Since so many jobs have left the cities for the suburbs and even the exurbs, ten million people travel more than an hour to get to work.  Three million awake in the dark and cross state lines to get to their jobs.

What’s called an ‘extreme commute' is a 90 minute ride to work. People who travel that far do so either because they can’t afford to live near their workplaces or because they prefer a better quality of life.

There are 25,000 people who leave the Poconos every workday for jobs in New York and in two commuter families, Princeton is home and work is in New York for one member, and Philadelphia is the other.

There are about 75 trends discussed in the book and readers have been surprised to find out how they touch all our lives.