| Train Contributor(s): Devers, A. N. (Author), Bogost, Ian (Editor), Schaberg, Christopher (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1501333402 ISBN-13: 9781501333408 Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic OUR PRICE: $14.20 Product Type: Paperback Published: March 2025 This item may be ordered no more than 25 days prior to its publication date of March 6, 2025 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Philosophy | Aesthetics - Literary Criticism | Semiotics & Theory |
| Series: Object Lessons |
| Physical Information: 160 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Triggering severe nostalgia and denoting adventure, mystery, and glamour, the passenger train is still portrayed as the most romantic mode of transportation in history. But what does long-distance travel by train really add up to today? In 2005, after quitting not only a successful museum job, but a profession, writer A. N. Devers bought a 30-day rail pass and circumnavigated the United States (and a bit of Canada), disembarking and visiting over a dozen towns and cities, finding that the passenger car was at once adventure and a nightmare-the promise of self-discovery and renewal via train trip was only a daydream. Instead she emerged from her 8,111-mile journey with a close view of America's crumbling infrastructure and the decaying communities alongside the tracks. The train, it turns out, is a portal to what might have existed if America's rails hadn't been sold off and bought out. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic. |
Contributor Bio(s): Schaberg, Christopher: - Christopher Schaberg is Associate Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, USA. He is the author of The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight (2013) and co-editor of Deconstructing Brad Pitt (2014). He is series co-editor (Ian Bogost) of the series Object Lessons.Bogost, Ian: - Ian Bogost is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. Bogost is author or co-author of seven books: Unit Operations (2006), Persuasive Games (2007), Racing the Beam ( 2009), Newsgames (2010), How To Do Things with Videogames (2011), Alien Phenomenology (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), and 10 PRINT CHR (205.5+RND(1)); Goto 10 (2012). Bogost also creates videogames that cover topics as varied as airport security, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, suburban errands, and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally. His game A Slow Year, a collection of game poems for Atari, won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at the 2010 Indiecade Festival. |