On Roads: A Hidden History - Hardcover

Moran, Joe

3.92

143 ratings by Goodreads

9781846680526: On Roads: A Hidden History

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846680522 ISBN 13: 9781846680526

Publisher: Profile Books, 2009

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In this history of roads and what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain's favourite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, 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, from Napoleon's role in the numbering system to the surprising origin of sat-nav.

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Review:

A delightful look at the cultural history of our roads...Moran's reflections on traffic jams are also illuminating: after reading them the prospect of congestion is really quite alluring. (Editor's Pick The Bookseller)

Entertaining stuff, a blend of history, cultural and social observation and travel writing which motors along nicely. Quirky, funny and a great gift buy for Father's Day. (Booksellers Choice The Bookseller)

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 2009-03-31)

Wonderful. Joe Moran is the master of turning the mundane realities of everyday life into the stuff of history, and in this book he has surpassed himself. From speed limits to Travelodges, nothing escapes his forensic examination, and almost no page is without some surprising insight. Whoever could have known that roads were so fascinating?' (Dominic Sandbrook)

Joe Moran is one of the most interesting and original observers of the minutiae of British life to emerge in a long while. (Matthew Engel)

Truly wonderful...every minute devoted to this book is richly rewarded. It is hard to say which is the more remarkable here: the astonishing range and variety of what Joe Moran knows, or the easeful, evocative, luxuriously entertaining way he parcels it up and puts it across. (David McKie, author of Great British Bus Journeys)

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)

A fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining exposition of how we all get from A to B. Part history, part anthropology, Joe Moran gives meaning to the everyday in this compelling exploration of how Britain's roads function - and what they have come to mean. Somewhat akin to a modern day JB Priestley, he has gone in search of modern Britain by travelling its motorways, stopping at its service stations - and checking out its road rage. A wonderful book. Moran has fast become Britain's foremost explorer and explainer of the disregarded. (Juliet Gardiner, author of Wartime: Britain 1939-1945)

a really fascinating insight into everything from motorways to byways by one of Britain' s best cultural studies academics. This is a really necessary book - one wonders why it hasn't been done before - that combines travel writing, history and anthropology to delve into roads as a social phenomena. (Giles Foden Cond� Nast Traveller 2009-06-01)

Engaging... wide-ranging but succinct...he delves knowledgably into the history of the British road system...very instructive it is too. (Robert Low Standpoint 2009-06-01)

Book Description:

We use roads every day, yet we have no idea of why our journeys are the way they are - of how roads are built, signposted, mapped or numbered. In unravelling this history, cultural historian Joe Moran throws a whole new light onto our history and our daily lives.

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