Anyone looking for a book about driverless cars -- smart, wide-ranging, nontechnical, easy to understand -- was pretty much out of luck until "Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead" was published in September. The authors, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, have a reputation for clear, succinct writing about emerging technologies. It's geared toward nonexperts, but scientists, engineers and computer programmers can learn new things too. Lipson is a roboticist and professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University, where he directs the Creative Machines Lab. Kurman, a former product manager and industry analyst at Microsoft, is an author and speaker with a specialty in technology and its effect on our daily lives and the economy.