Matthew Crawford devotes Why We Drive to an anonymous couple he sees running down a wooded trail, pretending they’re riding motorcycles, making vrooming noises and playfully leaping over roots. It’s this eye for the small but uniquely human details that helped make his first book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, so popular. As in Shop Class, Crawford uses Why We Drive to consider and argue for fundamental pleasures, motivations, competencies, and the powers of manual skills. In a culture driven by corporations that would have us be “self-driven” passengers (and charge us a subscription for seat warmers), Drive is a stirring reminder of the power of a ribboning road, a distant horizon, and a basic vehicle to connect the two.
Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road