A history of New York subway passengers as they navigated the system's constraints while striving for individuality, or at least a smooth ride.
When the subway first opened with much fanfare on October 27, 1904, New York became a city of underground passengers almost overnight. In this book, Stefan Höhne examines how the experiences of subway passengers in New York City were intertwined with cultural changes in urban mass society throughout the twentieth century. Höhne argues that underground transportation--which early passengers found both exhilarating and distressing--changed perceptions, interactions, and the organization of everyday life.
Stefan Höhne is a a cultural historian of urbanization and technology and a Mercator Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, Germany.
Preface to the English Edition xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1 Utopian Passengers 21 2 Machines and the Masses 73 3 Techniques of the Senses 133 4 Lonely Robots 187 5 Crisis and Complaint 213 6 Limits of Containment 257 Notes 273 Bibliography 339 Index 367
A history of New York subway passengers as they navigated the system's constraints while striving for individuality, or at least a smooth ride.
When the subway first opened with much fanfare on October 27, 1904, New York became a city of underground passengers almost overnight. In this book, Stefan Höhne examines how the experiences of subway passengers in New York City were intertwined with cultural changes in urban mass society throughout the twentieth century. Höhne argues that underground transportation--which early passengers found both exhilarating and distressing--changed perceptions, interactions, and the organization of everyday life.
Author
Stefan Höhne is a a cultural historian of urbanization and technology and a Mercator Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, Germany.
Preface to the English Edition xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1 Utopian Passengers 21 2 Machines and the Masses 73 3 Techniques of the Senses 133 4 Lonely Robots 187 5 Crisis and Complaint 213 6 Limits of Containment 257 Notes 273 Bibliography 339 Index 367