Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

As a transportation professional it is interesting to peer into the history of the taxi. This book not only provides historical information but also a vivid account of the hardships and stories of the taxi driver.

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.