Tom Vanderbilt

Tom Vanderbilt (born 1968) is an American journalist, blogger, and author of the best-selling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).

A freelancer, Vanderbilt has contributed articles on a broad range of subjects encompassing design, technology, science, and culture to such publications as Slate, Wired, The London Review of Books, Artforum, The Financial Times, Rolling Stone, New York Times Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, Cabinet, Metropolis, Design Observer, The Wilson Quarterly, and Popular Science.

In 2002 he published his first full-length book, Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America. H-Net Reviews said of the book, "Survival City offers an insightful exploration of the ruins of atomic America that demands attention in our current moment. In the poignant aftermath of September 11 the futility of Cold War architecture suggested throughout the book takes on new resonance."

After three years of research, in 2008 he released Traffic which, according to the publisher Knopf’s promotional material, had a first run printing of 150,000 copies and was a feature of the Book of the Month Club. The Wall Street Journal called Traffic, “a fascinating survey of the oddities and etiquette of driving”. The Boston Globe wrote of the book's genesis: "He found no serious general books about [driving] but did find a mountain of research. So for three years he immersed himself in the subject, traveled around the world, interviewing drivers, researchers, and traffic engineers. With almost 90 pages of footnotes, the book is a bottomless compendium of research." Some of this research began by asking a question on the community weblog Ask Metafilter in 2005. While Vanderbilt found the responses useful, mentioning the site during a Boing Boing ingenuity lecture; he referred to the site's users as "overeducated and overopinionated geeks." His publisher, Knopf, neglected to request the right to reprint comments from the site from Metafilter's staff or from the quoted users.

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