Taxi!

A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver
Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8554-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 475 g

Naturally identified with the Big Apple, New York City cabdrivers hold a special place in the American folk culture writ large. Cabbies proverbially counsel, console, and confound, all the while flitting through the snarling traffic and bustling masses of the nation's largest city. Variously seen as the key to street-level opinion, a source of reliable information, or mysterious savants who don't speak much English, the hacks who move New Yorkers have been integral to the city’s growth and culture since the mid-nineteenth century when they first began shuttling residents, workers, and visitors in horse-drawn carriages. Their importance grew with the introduction of gasoline-powered cars early last century and continues to the present day, when more than 12,000 licensed yellow cabs operate in Manhattan alone.

Taxi! is the first book-length history of New York City cabdrivers and the community they compose. From labor unrest and racial strife to ruthless competition and political machinations, this deftly woven narrative captures the people—lower-class immigrants for the most part—and their hardscrabble struggle to capture a piece of the American dream. Hodges tells the tale through contemporary news accounts, Hollywood films, social science research, and the words of the cabbies themselves.

Whether or not you’ve ever hailed a cab on Broadway, Taxi! provides a fascinating new perspective on New York’s most colorful emissaries.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hodges, Graham Russell Gao (Colgate University)

Hodges, Graham Russell Gao

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Creation of the Taxi Man, 1907–1920
2. Hack Men in the Jazz Age, 1920–1930
3. The Search for Order during the Depression, 1930–1940
4. Prosperity during Wartime, 1940–1950
5. The Creation of the Classic Cabby, 1950–1960
6. Unionization and Its Discontents, 1960–1980
7. The Lease Driver and Proletarian, 1980–2006
Epilogue
Appendix: Data Tables
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Hodges, Graham Russell Gao
Graham Russell Gao Hodges, a former New York City cabdriver, is the Distinguished Fulbright Professor of History at Peking University and the George Dorland Langdon, Jr. Professor of History at Colgate University.