The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation

We throw around the word globalization without really thinking about all of its impacts. The instant and free flow of goods around the corner and around the world comes with a cost. The iPhone delivered overnight from China, the speciality coffee from around the world, the stores filled with goods from hundreds of countries.

Rarely do we stop to think how all of this gets to us. Sure we see or even complain about all the trucks on the road. But that’s only the end of the journey, sometimes the last mile. Many of items of daily life travel hundreds of thousands of miles to reach us. Think about all those container ships at every major port in the world.

Beyond this, the story of traffic and of our cars, only compounds the problem. What successful community is not dealing with the scourge of traffic?

That’s the hidden story that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ed Humes tells in his new book Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation.

My conversation with Ed Humes:

Where could this car take you?

Think about advertising for new cars. Better yet, think about looking at a new car in the showroom. That experience is all about possibilities and dreams. It’s about what that car can do for you, not just where it will take you geographically, but where it will take you emotionally.

From the days of Mad Men, right up to today, that’s what the car dream has always been about. But usually, like the real disconnect between dreams and life, the car takes on a life of its own. It's often far removed from the ad or the showroom fantasy.

Few cars have conjured up this iconography more than the 1957 Chevy. A car that personified our relationship to the automobile and the infinite possibilities that were postwar America. That's the world that Earl Swift captures in Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream.

My conversation with Earl Swift: