Taxi!: A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver (Hardcover)

~ Graham Russell Gao Hodges (Author)
Key Phrases: female cabbies, lease driver, hack men, New York, Hack Bureau, Van Arsdale (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hodges has written a marvelous, deeply empathetic and richly detailed account of a profession so indelibly inscribed in the daily experience and mythology of urban life as to be all but invisible to us. At once frantically hailed and frequently abused, taxi drivers epitomize -- in ways most of us grasp but routinely ignore -- the vivid human flux that is the lifeblood of city life. Thanks to the mercurial culture, shifting demographics, and glancingly contingent nature of the experience on both sides of the glass -- at once endlessly repeated and never twice the same -- cab drivers must rank among the least well-represented professionals in the hierarchy of urban life. Hodges has set out to remedy that, and has done so admirably." -- Ric Burns, director of the Emmy Award-winning series, New York: A Documentary Film

"You have to live in New York to know how critical taxis are to circulation in the great metropolis. But you do not have to live in New York to be fascinated by this unusual book, which gives a powerful human dimension to one of Gotham's most important subcultures." -- Kenneth T. Jackson, editor of the Encyclopedia of New York City

"Grab this cab! Its historian driver will take you on a fascinating spin around town, recalling a host of dramatic events, and introducing an amazing array of cabbies past and present (including the astonishing number of movie stars who played taxi driver on the big screen). Your perspective on cab rides -- and New York City -- will never be the same again." -- Michael A. Wallace, coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

"Hodges' story will be a pleasure for both scholarly and general interest readers. Highly recommended." -- Library Journal

"Taxi! is not only lively and erudite social history, it is probably the best account of taximen that is ever to be written... The cabby is fortunate, however, to have found his sociological poet laureate in Graham Hodges. In the taxi trade, we would have called this fascinating trip in his gregarious company, 'a great fare.'" -- Wall Street Journal

"In this informative, solid history, Graham Rusell Gao Hodges traces the story of the cab drivers from 1907, when the first metered taxis appeared on New York streets, to the present." -- Pete Hamill, New York Times Book Review

"The definitive book on New York cabs." -- Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

"Hodges draws from driver memoirs, taxi publications, and the drivers' image as seen in the movies and on television. This is an interesting, readable study of the role of the taxis in New York's history, especially the struggles the drivers face." -- Choice

Product Description

Naturally identified with the Big Apple, New York City cabdrivers hold a special place in the American folk culture writ large. Cabbies proverbially counsel, console, and confound, all the while flitting through the snarling traffic and bustling masses of the nation's largest city. Variously seen as the key to street-level opinion, a source of reliable information, or mysterious savants who don't speak much English, the hacks who move New Yorkers have been integral to the city's growth and culture since the mid-nineteenth century when they first began shuttling residents, workers, and visitors in horse-drawn carriages. Their importance grew with the introduction of gasoline-powered cars early last century and continues to the present day, when more than 12,000 licensed yellow cabs operate in Manhattan alone.

Taxi! is the first book-length history of New York City cabdrivers and the community they compose. From labor unrest and racial strife to ruthless competition and political machinations, this deftly woven narrative captures the people -- lower-class immigrants for the most part -- and their hardscrabble struggle to capture a piece of the American dream. Hodges tells the tale through contemporary news accounts, Hollywood films, social science research, and the words of the cabbies themselves.

Whether or not you've ever hailed a cab on Broadway, Taxi! provides a fascinating new perspective on New York's most colorful emissaries.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (March 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080188554X
• ISBN-13: 978-0801885549
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #412,219 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not cluttered with talk, October 18, 2007

By	arzewski (pittsburgh, pa United States) - See all my reviews

Maybe because I am a slow reader, but i dislike books that are made fatter and fluidier with made-up conversations and dialogue. I appreciate a succint book like this one. This is well researched. The sources at the back of the book is impressive. The author chose a chronological order, and maybe for me it would have been more fun if the book was ordered into themes, but then you would have a different book. I found interesting the beginning of the book, about bridging the class divide, of how uptown people can approach and communicate with the working class people (the driver). In the chapter of the sixties and seventies, I didn't see any mention of how the 1973 recession affected cab drivers, or the near-meltdown of the city in its bankrupcy verge.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Way to Learn About Cabbies, September 6, 2007

By	Taxicab Maven (New York City) - See all my reviews

Graham Hodges cares about cabbies and drivers past. It's easy to see -- while many writers only rely on economic studies or interviews with current cab drivers, Hodges plows through history and gives us the viewpoint of taxi drivers through the ages. He's able to paint a picture for readers of a New York hack's life.

One of the most enjoyable parts of this book is a photographed collection of taxi memorabilia published with the book, including taxi-themed post cards full of sexual innuendo and a picture of female cabbies filling in for their men during the war. He has a unique way of showing the place of the yellow cab in U.S. pop culture, making the book much more interesting than a "just the facts" history lesson.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive but pedantic, July 20, 2007

By	Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

Graham Hodges's new book, "Taxi!", is as thorough a study of cabdrivers in New York over the past hundred years as I'm sure one will ever see. Tracing the beginnings of the taxi business, Hodges takes the reader through many phases of its development and one thing can be certain...today's cabbies face dilemmas not unlike their predecessors. One assumes, through a back cover photo, that the author was a cabbie at one time. No mention is made of this in the book. It would have been nice to have had him offer his own reflections. Yet he is wonderfully good at educating us as to how the taxi industry works.

The problem with "Taxi!" is that it's just flat. At slightly over 180 pages of narrative it feels like a very long book. The first chapters deal with wages, strikes and way too many examples of Hollywood's mirroring and mimicking of New York cabdrivers. There are good stories of women who hack as well as African-American contributions, but by the end of the first half I wanted to give up. Going more or less decade by decade, there is a good chapter about taxis in the fifties. Here Hodges shines as he offers some good anecdotes...especially by Hy Gardner. But after that, the book loses its appeal.

"Taxi!" could have been a better book if it had been more fluid. A study is great but it has to be appealing. Hodges has given a deep insight about a segment of the population which has taken its hits but has fought back and keeps going.