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Traffic considers the history and philosophy of roundabouts, speed bumps, the pedestrian mall, and other efforts to manage traffic, reign in the power of the internal combustion engine, ramp back century-long efforts to increase the flow of traffic, and establish greater balance between humans and machines.

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Speed. Bump. Speed. Traffic considers the history and philosophy of roundabouts, speed bumps, the pedestrian mall, and other efforts to manage traffic. Exploring ways to reign in the power of the internal combustion engine, ramp back century-long efforts to increase the flows of traffic, and establish greater balance between humans and machines, Paul Josephson considers the history of traffic, and the political and other controversies that frame the belated technological efforts to calm it.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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Introduction
1. Mushrooms in Minsk
2. Speed Bumps in Twentieth Century Philosophy
3. Utopian Visions of Machines and People: A World Without Speed Bumps
4. Mumford and Moses
5. The Historical Concatenation of Congestion6. Speed Bumpology
7. Crashworthy Automobiles as Speed Bumps
8. Race, Equality and Traffic
9. Pedestrian Malls as Large Scale Speed Bumps
10. The Woonerf: The Neighborhood Speed Bump
11. Taming Roads Themselves
12. Curb Cuts for People, Roundabouts for Automobiles
13. The Bicycle as a Neo-Luddite Traffic Solution
14. Gendered Speed Bumps
15. If Stopped in Traffic, Hope for a Crashworthy Automobile
16. Safety Delays in the Name of Freedom
17. Speed Bump Downsides
18. Waxing and Waning of Brazilian Speed Bumps
19. Potholes and Paper Money
20. Speed Bumps for Other Hopeful Technologies
Notes
Index

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Traffic is both insightful and entertaining. Based on a range of sources, it provides us with a fuller understanding of the methods by which we might be able to control the negative effects of the automobile on our cities. Joel A. Tarr, Richard S. Caliguiri University Professor of History and Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

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Paul Josephson is Professor of History at Colby College, USA. He is the author of twelve books, including Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (Harvard University Press, 2014), Lenin´s Laureate: A Life in Communist Science (MIT Press, 2010), Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), and Motorized Obsession: Life, Liberty and the Small Bore Engine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

Paul Josephson is Professor of History at Colby College, USA. He is the author of twelve books, including Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans (2015), The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (2014), Lenin´s Laureate: A Life in Communist Science (2010), Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism (2009), and Motorized Obsession: Life, Liberty and the Small Bore Engine (2007).

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