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Tag Archives: goods/services
Mean Streets
Mean Streets: Confessions of a Nightime Taxi Driver© 2002 Peter McSherry256 pages Mean Streets takes readers into the dark side of Canada, or at least the dark side of Toronto. Ever since the 1970s, Peter McSherry has been driving the night … Continue reading
The Motel in America
The Motel in America© 1996 Jefferson S. Rogers, John A Jakle, and Keith A. Sculle408 pages At some point in high school I pulled out a dictionary to find out what, exactly, was the difference between a motel and a … Continue reading
Tubes
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet© 2012 Andrew Blum303 pages It turns out Ted Stevens was right: the Internet really is a series of tubes, connecting large boxes, and usually in nondescript warehouses that look like self-storage units. … Continue reading
Taxi!
Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver© 2007 Graham Russell Gao Hodges225 pages No film set in New York City is complete without scenes of Manhattan traffic, dense with yellow cars — the patrolling ranks of the … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged goods/services, history, labor, NYC, on the job, social history, transportation
4 Comments
Picking Up
Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City© 2014 Robin Nagle304 pages When young Robin Nagle stumbled upon a communal dumpsite in the middle of an otherwise picturesque meadow, she was … Continue reading
Adieu to you, and you and you and you —
As 2015 was ending I finished up a couple of works which merit mentioning. Firstly is Jane Austen’s Emma. I have read Austen before (Pride and Prejudice), intrigued by mention of Darcy as a model gentleman, Emma was thus my … Continue reading
Posted in history
Tagged American West, English Literature, goods/services, history, Jane Austen, trains, transportation
5 Comments
Oil on the Brain
Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Journey to Your Tank © 2007 Lisa Magonelli 336 pages Every moment, oil is surging up wells, being chemically sorted in vast refineries, sloshing its way across continents in pipelines, and being dispersed … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews
Tagged Africa, China, commerce, goods/services, Middle East, Near East, occupational account, on the job, Persia, Persia-Iran, resources, South America
1 Comment
The Horse in the City
The Horse in the City© 2007 Clay McShane, Joel A. Tarr242 pages To the American imagination, horses are the stuff of country dreams, of farms and cowboys. This is a recent conceit, however, as for most of American history humans … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged America, animal domestication, cities, goods/services, history, labor, transportation
5 Comments
Napoleon’s Buttons
Napoleon’s Buttons384 pages© 2003 Penny LeCouter Napeolon’s Buttons is microhistory in the truest sense of the world, a mix of science and history that not only dwells on the historical impact of various substances (cotton, sugar, chloroflourocarbons, silk), but examines … Continue reading
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