A Brief History of Motion
From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next
1st Edition
Published on 19. August 2021
272 pages
978-1-5266-4523-4 (ISBN)
Description
'Speckled with anecdotes, insights and surprises. It is great fun - and utterly timely' Sunday Times
'Standage writes with a masterly clarity' New York Times
'The product of deep research, great intelligence and burnished prose . . . It is rare that I encounter a non-fiction author whose prose is so elegant that it is worth reading for itself. Standage is a writer of this class' Wall Street Journal
Beginning around 3,500 BC with the wheel, and moving through the eras of horsepower, trains and bicycles, Tom Standage puts the rise of the car - and the future of urban transport - into a broader historical context.
Our society has been shaped by the car in innumerable ways, many of which are so familiar that we no longer notice them. Why does red mean stop and green mean go? Why do some countries drive on the left, and some on the right? How did cars, introduced only a little over a century ago, change the way the world was administered, laid out and policed, along with experiences like eating and shopping? And what might travel in a post-car world look like?
As social transformations from ride-sharing to the global pandemic force us to critically re-examine our relationship with personal transportation, A Brief History of Motion is an essential contribution to our understanding of how the modern world came to be.
'Standage writes with a masterly clarity' New York Times
'The product of deep research, great intelligence and burnished prose . . . It is rare that I encounter a non-fiction author whose prose is so elegant that it is worth reading for itself. Standage is a writer of this class' Wall Street Journal
Beginning around 3,500 BC with the wheel, and moving through the eras of horsepower, trains and bicycles, Tom Standage puts the rise of the car - and the future of urban transport - into a broader historical context.
Our society has been shaped by the car in innumerable ways, many of which are so familiar that we no longer notice them. Why does red mean stop and green mean go? Why do some countries drive on the left, and some on the right? How did cars, introduced only a little over a century ago, change the way the world was administered, laid out and policed, along with experiences like eating and shopping? And what might travel in a post-car world look like?
As social transformations from ride-sharing to the global pandemic force us to critically re-examine our relationship with personal transportation, A Brief History of Motion is an essential contribution to our understanding of how the modern world came to be.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
ISBN-13
978-1-5266-4523-4 (9781526645234)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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Book
07/2022
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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08/2021
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Person
Tom Standage is deputy editor of the Economist and the author of six previous history books, including Writing on the Wall, the New York Times bestsellers A History of the World in Six Glasses and An Edible History of Humanity, and The Victorian Internet. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Wired, and other publications. Standage holds a degree in engineering and computer science from Oxford University. He lives in London.
@TomStandage
@TomStandage
Content
- Cover
- By the Same Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Wheels in the Ancient World
- 2. Your Carriage Awaits
- 3. Under One's Own Steam
- 4. The Rubber Hits the Road
- 5. You Are What You Drive
- 6. Who Owns the Streets?
- 7. The Road to Suburbia
- 8. Car Culture
- 9. The Fall and Rise of the Electric Car
- 10. All Hail the Ride
- 11. From Horseless to Driverless
- 12. The Road Ahead
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Sources
- Image Credits
- Index
