Product Description

We use roads every day, yet we have no idea of why our journeys are the way they are – of how roads are built, signposted, mapped or numbered. In unravelling this history, cultural historian Joe Moran throws a whole new light onto our history and our daily lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3586 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
`Truly wonderful...every minute devoted to this book is richly rewarded.' --David McKie, author of 'Great British Bus Journeys'

'Wonderful. Joe Moran is the master of turning the mundane realities of everyday life into the stuff of history.' - Dominic Sandbrook
--Dominic Sandbrook

'Terrific... he takes numerous diversions into subjects that really shouldn't be interesting, but which he makes fascinating... entertainingly contrarian' - Robert Macfarlane, The Guardian
--Robert Macfarlane, The Guardian

'Packed with fascinating detail' --Brian Morton, Glasgow Herald

`Expansive, unexpected cultural history... it's loaded with strange and delightful details ... I've got many pages folded over' --Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic

`This is a part-bonkers, part-brilliant book, as many of the best books are.' --Jonathan Wright, The Tablet

`The optimism and sense of wonder of the era is evoked brilliantly... an elegant piece of scholarship... engrossing' --Alasdair Reid, Sunday Herald

Review
`Wonderful. Whoever could have known that roads were so fascinating?'

Review
`Fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining ... A wonderful book. Moran has fast become Britain's foremost explorer and explainer of the disregarded.' Juliet Gardiner, author of 'Wartime: Britain 1939-1945'

Customer Reviews

A wonderful, engrossing book which needed to be written and deserves to be read
This is a wonderful, engrossing book which needed to be written and deserves to be read. Funny, engaging, incredibly well-researched and impressively broad in its scope, On Roads tells the fascinating - and it is, truly - postwar history of British roads and the British motorist and is peppered with the sort of extraordinary facts and trivia I can't resist. Bob Geldof working on a roadgang on the M25, a quarter of a million fish being rescued before they started building Spaghetti Junction, and why migrating birds love the A34. Fantastic.

A whole new take on motoring
I bought this book to give as a present but became too engrossed to give it away. I've always wondered why you tend to see so many kestrels and kites when you're driving along the motorway - and this book explains it all. This is a completely fascinating look at something I - like many other people I'm sure - tend to take for granted. Highly recommended.

On Roads
'On Roads' is a valuable addition to the social history of the 20th century focusing on a possibly neglected area. Carefully researched from a wide range of sources, and illustrated with anecdote, this is an eminently readable, and hugely enjoyable book. This book provides a fascinating account the growth of roads in the last century, how they have changed our behavior, and of our changing attitude to road building.