During the 1960s a group of young artists in Japan challenged official forms of politics and daily life through interventionist art practices. William Marotti situates this phenomenon in the historical and political contexts of Japan after the Second World War and the international activism of the 1960s. The Japanese government renewed its Cold War partnership with the United States in 1960, defeating protests against a new security treaty through parliamentary action and the use of riot police. Afterward, the government promoted a depoliticized everyday world of high growth and consumption, creating a sanitized national image to present in the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. Artists were first to challenge this new political mythology. Marotti examines their political art, and the state's aggressive response to it. He reveals the challenge mounted in projects such as Akasegawa Genpei's 1,000-yen prints, a group performance on the busy Yamanote train line, and a plan for a giant guillotine in the Imperial Plaza. Focusing on the annual Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition, he demonstrates how artists came together in a playful but powerful critical art, triggering judicial and police response. Money, Trains, and Guillotines expands our understanding of the role of art in the international 1960s, and of the dynamics of art and policing in Japan.

None of the world's great cities is as closely identified with its subway as New York. Its trains provide much more than just rapid transit. They give New Yorkers a powerful symbol of their metropolis, one that they use to express both their hopes and their fears for the urban future.

Subway City explores New York's transit system as both fact and metaphor. Brooks traces the development of the subway from its inception as the newest and most efficient public transportation system to its decline as an overcrowded and dangerous part of city life. The crowded cars gave Harold Lloyd material for comedy, fueled William Randolph Hearst's crusade against the Traction Trust, and convinced Lewis Mumford that the subway was a futile effort to solve the city's problems. Brooks explores films which have dramatized the dangers lurking below ground, and examines the infamous Bernhard Goetz shooting that made the subway a symbol of urban decay. More hopefully, he describes the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's station improvements and ambitious programs for Music Underground, Poetry in Transit, and Arts-in-Transit, as keys to the city's renewal.

“Gets right to the point: put [transit] where the people are...The author combines detailed knowledge and a refreshing frankness...Keep this book within easy reach.” 
-Planning

In some US and Canadian cities, transit has quietly been expanding and improving over the last few years, despite funding and ridership challenges. How do we assess the advances and failures of our current systems to move forward strategically and wisely?
 
The first edition of Trains, Buses, People was dubbed “a transit wonk’s bible” and guided “a smarter conversation about urban transit” in the US. This second edition is fully updated and expanded to include eight Canadian cities and two new US cities (Indianapolis and San Juan, Puerto Rico).
 
In Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition: An Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit, transit expert and “transportation hero” Christof Spieler provides a new section on inclusivity to help agencies understand how to welcome riders regardless of race, gender, income, or disability. Select cities include new maps overlaying transit and poverty data, and systems that have started construction since the first edition in 2018 have been added. Other new sections address network typologies, guideway types, station types, and fares.

Spieler has spent over a decade advocating for transit as a writer, community leader, urban planner, transit board member, and enthusiast. He strongly believes that just about anyone—regardless of training or experience—can identify what makes good transit with the right information. In the fun, accessible, and visually appealing Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition: An Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit, Spieler shows how cities can build successful transit. He profiles the 49 metropolitan areas in the US and eight metropolitan areas in Canada that have rail transit or BRT, using data, photos, and maps for easy comparison. Spieler ranks the best and worst systems and he offers analysis of how geography, politics, and history complicate transit planning. He shows how the unique circumstances of every city have resulted in very different transit systems.

Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition is intended for non-experts—it will help any citizen, professional, or policymaker with a vested interest evaluate a transit proposal and understand what makes transit effective. It shows that it is possible, with the right tools, to build good transit.