On Roads [Hardcover]

Joe Moran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 2009

In this history of roads and what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain's favorite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, clover-leafs and spaghetti junctions. Using a unique blend of travel writing, anthropology, history and social observation, he explores how Britain's roads have their roots in unexpected places. He visits the Roman role in the way our roads are numbered, the ancient sat-nav systems of China of 2600BC and the unknown demonstrations against by-passes in the 1920s, and ends up at the roots of today's arguments about road pricing and road rage. Full of quirky nuggets of history, "On Roads" also celebrates the often overlooked people whose work we take for granted, such as Percy Shaw, the inventor of the catseye, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, the designers of the road sign system, and Charles Forte, the entrepreneur behind the service station. These stories of our past shed light on hidden changes in our society, the relation between people and nature and the invisibility of the mundane. And - on subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, and the 'non-places' where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams - they have never been told together, until now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'A warm-hearted, ingenious, endlessly fascinating exploration of our complicated relationship with the road. Joe Moran is single-handedly transforming the history of everyday life in modern Britain.' David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain." "'Joe Moran has a genius for turning the prosaic poetic - this is a tone poem in tarmac. Motorway journeys will never be so dull again. A treat.' Peter Hennessy, author of 'Having It So Good'."

About the Author

Joe Moran is a Reader in Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He writes regularly for The Guardian and the New Statesman, and the THES have tipped him as one of the bestselling academics of the future. He is the author of Queuing for Beginners, also published by Profile [9781861978417], and lives in Liverpool.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Profile Books (June 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846680522
• ISBN-13: 978-1846680526
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,230,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A social history of the British motorway, October 23, 2009

By 

saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Roads (Hardcover)

This book is of the genre that takes some physical feature of everyday life and subjects it to academic scrutiny. Motorways (on this side of the Atlantic, expressways or interstates) are a staple of daily life that we rarely think about. Much of Moran's book focuses on motorway service areas, which in Britain have restaurants and (occasionally) motels. There's no counterpart to this in the US or Canada, except along toll highways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike or Ohio Turnpike. Even along US toll highways, there's nothing quite as grandiose as the 65-foot-tall Forton Service Area, shown in one of the book's few photographs.

This book roams across innumerable road-related topics and is filled with scattered insights; for example, the author notes that criticism of service area eateries is grounded in class-based elitism, coming from people who rarely experience working-class food. Moran points out that for those whose basis of comparison is the local cafe or workplace cafeteria, the food at service plazas is quite acceptable. Or, how many Brits are aware of the origins of the road numbering system? (You mean there's actually a pattern?) The author also discusses how the notion of speed limits have evolved over time, and in a parallel manner, how attitudes toward speeding and law-breaking on highways have evolved over time. He has a keen eye for hypocrisy on the Left. For example, he notes the irony of people driving their cars to a meeting to protest a new highway, or how Liberal prime ministers have pursued Thatcher's road-building program, albeit cloaked behind progressive-sounding rhetoric.

Moran's greatest contribution is in emphasizing how ephemeral the criteria are by which we judge artificial changes to the landscape. Motorways were once regarded as objects of beauty that symbolized hope for the future, but now they are seen as scars on the countryside. It is quite possible, Moran argues, that motorways will once again be viewed as historical artifacts to be loved. Much the same has occurred to railways, as Moran points out -- once reviled for ruining the countryside, now associated with environmentalism and historical charm. Society's sense of what is aesthetically pleasing changes with each generation, and similarly, each generation has things it hyperventilates about. For example, it's hard to believe that when automobiles first became common, one of the biggest complaints was the ugliness of petrol pumps. To the people of 2020 or 2030, our current aesthetic values may appear equally out of date. After all, it wasn't that long ago that people regarded brutalist modern architecture, with its massive concrete slabs, as beautiful.