A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next

By Tom Standage

'Speckled with anecdotes, insights and surprises. It is great fun - and utterly timely' Sunday Times

'Standage writes with a masterly clarity' New York Times

'The product of deep research, great intelligence and burnished prose . . . It is rare that I encounter a non-fiction author whose prose is so elegant that it is worth reading for itself. Standage is a writer of this class' Wall Street Journal

Beginning around 3,500 BC with the wheel, and moving through the eras of horsepower, trains and bicycles, Tom Standage puts the rise of the car – and the future of urban transport – into a broader historical context.

Our society has been shaped by the car in innumerable ways, many of which are so familiar that we no longer notice them. Why does red mean stop and green mean go? Why do some countries drive on the left, and some on the right? How did cars, introduced only a little over a century ago, change the way the world was administered, laid out and policed, along with experiences like eating and shopping? And what might travel in a post-car world look like?

As social transformations from ride-sharing to the global pandemic force us to critically re-examine our relationship with personal transportation, A Brief History of Motion is an essential contribution to our understanding of how the modern world came to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526608345

Tom Standage

Tom Standage is Deputy Editor of The Economist. He is the author of several books, including Uncommon Knowledge, Seriously Curious, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years and The Victorian Internet. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and Wired.

Reviews for A Brief History of Motion

[gothamajp · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A highly readable and accessible history of the rise, and possible demise, of the car as our dominant form of transport.But this isn’t a chronology of the motor industry, more of a social history that highlights the unforeseen and unintended consequences of the switch from horses to horseless carriages; that examines several interesting what-if scenarios along the way. I found it packed full of “I didn’t know that” moments. The book concludes with an interesting and cautionary look at what may come next in a connected data driven world where we may move from individual ownership to connected transport infrastructures and ‘Mobility as a Service’ models.

[bookanonjeff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting Overview. Needs Bibliography. It is actually somewhat interesting to me that of five reviews on Goodreads prior to this one, one of the reviewers specifically notes a lack of footnotes as a *good* thing... and this very thing is actually pretty well the only thing I could find to *ding* this text on. But I'm fairly consistent in that - no matter what, I expect a fact-based (vs more memoir-based) nonfiction title to include and reference a decent sized bibliography.

That noted, the substance of this text was well-written, approachable, at times amusing, and full of facts from a wide range of eras that this reader had not previously known. Even in the chapter on the development of driverless cars - much more thoroughly documented in DRIVEN by Alex Davies - there were a few facts that even having read that book and being a professional software developer (and thus more generally aware of tech than some), I genuinely didn't know before reading this book. Preceding chapters tracing the development of transportation during the 19th and early 20th centuries in particular were utterly fascinating, as was later coverage of the potential future for a car-less society. Remarkably well balanced, the text tends to steer clear - pun absolutely intended - of various relevant controversies (climate change, Peak Oil, Peak Car, autonomous vehicles, car-less society, etc) even while discussing said controversies' impact on society and future developments. Truly a solid examination of its topic, and very much recommended.

[pomo58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Brief History of Motion by Tom Standage is an interesting and fairly comprehensive history of motion as long as one knows how the word motion is used in the title. This is not a history of travel, so don't expect that story. This is using motion almost in the narrow sense of how one, or a small number, person moves around.I would also advise readers that while this history ultimately becomes about cars and their future, this isn't a history of the automotive industry (all makers and the small changes that make one model better than another) but about the large scale shifts leading to the automobile and then subsequent changes that provoked, or will provoke, major shifts in how we move around.Having said all that, this very interesting and informative book covers the history of transport, essentially as it pertains to wheels in various combinations. What effect did horse manure have in motivating change? How did the rail system, including short commuter rail as well as long distance rail, affect where attention was paid? Where might we go from here?This is a book that should appeal to most readers who enjoy social history, history told through the lens of a specific item (the wheel) as it changes over time, and changes society over time.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.