“Vanderbilt’s book surveys the advanced auto-life of America, where we have spent the past 100 years reshaping our lives and cities around cars. The Volvo, the Honda, the Prius have become our public selves, the face we show to the world, and the result has been a general decline of civility. Oh, how much easier it is to give someone the finger at 70 mph than at the farmer’s market. “In traffic,” writes Vanderbilt, “we struggle to stay human.” He approaches traffic as a collective human act, with all the complexity that entails. Our driving is fraught with paradoxes, unintended consequences, and inexplicable behaviors.” — Michael Agger, reviewing Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt, on Slate.
At this point I’ve done little more than skim Vanderbilt’s book, but I intend to read more.
I did like how this little excerpt from Slate‘s book review commented so aptly on the Vector Portraits by Andrew Bush – our cars as “the face we show to the world,” particularly when considering them alongside the “urban masks” of Walker Evans’ subway riders.