Driver's License

Name: Driver's License
Brand: Allen & Unwin
SKU: 9781628929133
Price: 21.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

By Meredith Castile

Series: Object Lessons

0.0 (0 reviews)

3.78

( 46 ratings, 9 reviews)

Summary

Driver's License by Meredith Castile is a thought-provoking exploration of the American driver's license as a cultural object. It symbolises freedom and mobility for youth while simultaneously embodying contradictions such as security versus vulnerability, democracy versus exclusion, and self-definition versus standardisation. Across historical and social contexts, the book examines how this everyday card reflects broader issues of identity, freedom, surveillance, and citizenship in American society.
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Format: Paperback / softback

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Driver's License

$21⁹⁹

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in cultural studies, American society, youth identity, and the socio-political implications of everyday objects. Also suited to those curious about design, civic life, and contemporary issues of freedom and control.

Description

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

A classic teenage fetish object, the American driver’s license has long symbolised freedom and mobility in a nation whose design assumes car travel and whose vastness rivals continents. It is youth’s pass to regulated vice—cigarettes, bars, tattoo parlours, casinos, strip joints, music venues, guns.

In its more recent history, the license has become increasingly associated with freedom’s flipside: screening. The airport’s heightened security checkpoint. Controversial ID voting laws. Federally mandated, anti-terrorist driver’s license re-designs.

The driver’s license encapsulates the contradictory values and practices of contemporary American culture—freedom and security, mobility and checkpoints, self-definition and standardisation, democracy and exclusion, superficiality and intimacy, the stable self and the self in flux.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Series: Object Lessons

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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critics praise the book for its insightful examination of the driver's license as a symbol of competing values, blending pop culture, personal anecdote, and philosophy. Heather Houser highlights its lessons on freedom, control, and authenticity, while Julian Yates notes its focus on national identity, design, teen culture, and civics. The book is noted for combining personal stories of teenage independence with a critical look at racial injustice and disenfranchisement in the U.S.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781628929133

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 29 January 2015

Country: United States

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 14.0mm

Width: 120.0mm

Height: 164.0mm

Weight: 160g

Pages: 160

Collections

Education & Reference Meredith Castile Non-Fiction Series: Object Lessons

About the Author

Meredith Castile is a content strategist at Google. She did her graduate studies in English and comparative literature at Stanford University. Driver's License was written during her years living in Vienna, Austria.