Traffic (Object Lessons) - Softcover

Josephson, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501329332 ISBN 13: 9781501329333

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Synopsis

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Speed. Bump. Speed. Traffic considers the history and philosophy of roundabouts, speed bumps, the pedestrian mall, and other efforts to manage traffic. Exploring ways to reign in the power of the internal combustion engine, ramp back century-long efforts to increase the flows of traffic, and establish greater balance between humans and machines, Paul Josephson considers the history of traffic, and the political and other controversies that frame the belated technological efforts to calm it.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

About this title

About the Authors

Paul Josephson is Professor of History at Colby College, USA. He is the author of twelve books, including Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (Harvard University Press, 2014), Lenin's Laureate: A Life in Communist Science (MIT Press, 2010), Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), and Motorized Obsession: Life, Liberty and the Small Bore Engine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, Director of Film & Media Studies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. Bogost is author or co-author of ten books, including Alien Phenomenology (2012)and Play Anything (2016).

Christopher Schaberg is Director of the Program in Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness (2017), The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth (2018), Searching for the Anthropocene (2019), Pedagogy of the Depressed (2021), and Adventure: An Argument for Limits (2023), all published by Bloomsbury. He is also the founding co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons book series.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501329332
• ISBN 13: 9781501329333
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192