"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.īecause it made possible rapid movement and shipping across large distances, joining far-off towns to economic and cultural capitals, many people who lived in the early 19th century regarded the railroad as an instrument of progress. Now updated with a new preface, The Railway Journey is an invaluable resource for readers interested in nineteenth-century culture and technology and the prehistory of modern media and digitalization. As a history of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city.īelonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. But this was not always the case as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change―the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness―was very much a learned behavior. His most recent book is// Short History of American Locomotive builders (Washington, D.C., 1982).The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society. White is curator of transportation at the National Museum of American His tory. But despite these failings, Schivelbusch has written a fascinating book that should stimulate more study in the phenomena of railway travel. The lack of a bibliography and an index further weakens the volume as a scholarly effort. The notes suggest that the author rarely read beyond secondary literature. The final chapters offer a weak ending to the strong core of the book and make the work read more like a collection of essays than a well-organized reference work. Sensational press accounts did little to reassure the public about the safety of this new mode of transit. The possibility of death or injury, always present whatever the mode of transportation, was heightened in the traveler’s mind by the incessantly clattering wheels and shrieking whistle. The rapid vibration and noise level induced a fatigue not en countered with highway, canal, or river travel.
The author makes a good case for the adverse effects of high-speed travel. Poorer-class travelers tended to mingle more readily in crowded coaches where the lack of privacy discouraged isolated occupations such as reading. First-class travelers in particular hid behind a book or newspaper. Trains traveled so fast that the passenger had little opportunity to study the landscape-and the trip was over so quickly that he had less time to interact with his fellow travelers. The book largely ignores the misery and slowness of prerailway travel and tends to idealize the pastoral nature of everyday life in preindustrial times. The greater speeds, dangers, and impersonal qual ity of travel had a profound effect on the traveling public-much of it negative, according to Schivelbusch’s interpretation of the data. The author is more convincing when he stays with the main themes of the book, and chapters 3 through 9 represent something of a pioneering attempt to explain the physiological and psychological ef fects of rail travel on passengers accustomed to life in the pre industrial age. He supports the claims of Winans as inventor of the eight-wheel railroad car and Whitney as the developer of inter changeable parts, despite long-standing criticism of these canards. Nor is it really a history of technology, for whenever the author attempts to discuss such matters, he reveals a poor under standing of the subject. It is not intended to be a history of travel.
This book is about the social/psychological impact of' railway travel in Western Europe ancl North America. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 515 The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the 19th Century.
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