Taxi From Hell

From the 1970s to the 90s a taxi driver investigates how society is changing. There are questions about a lot of what people believe, and how reasoning gets lost in a continuum of manipulative devices. How relationships work is explored in depth... starting with the many secrets held by prostitutes. Controversial viewpoints make the book a critical thinking exercise. It is a book to make you think, and also may be considered a vocabulary builder for some readers... an educational opportunity in more ways than just exposing the real world. First of a 4 book series... taken together they may present in combination, a detonation key, unlocking a door to change the world.

Whether or not you've ever hailed a cab on Broadway, Taxi! provides a fascinating perspective on New York's most colorful emissaries.

You'll disagree with it, you'll hate it, it will piss you off... Everything that nobody can talk about publicly gets told to a taxi driver. As well as all the gossip that gets overheard. Over 45 years of taxi journals, as well as research to answer the questions that nobody should ask. If you are a fully conscious critical thinking master you might love this book, but most people might find conflict with what they have been led to believe. This book is a raw presentation from the real world. The bias is yours.

She was sitting in a café in Paris, showing nearly all her legs; in grave trouble, she was drinking her sixth green Chartreuse and wishing she knew someone who would kill her stepmother for her. She was just eighteen, a child emotionally but old in experience and duplicity. The man with the umbrella who sat down at her table seemed exactly the one for whom she was searching. They were both lonely and found in each other the playmate for which they had longed. He was a man caught in a monster trap; it was murder she wanted and murder she got.

Shortlisted for the Bressani Literary Prize • A Globe and Mail Book of the Year • A CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021 In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi. “The taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Occupying the space between public and private, a cab brings together people who might otherwise never have met—yet most of us sit in the back and stare at our phones. Nowhere else do people occupy such intimate quarters and share so little. In a series of interviews with drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase, Driven seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the unknown stories that surround us. Travelling across borders of all kinds, from battlefields and occupied lands to midnight fares and Tim Hortons parking lots, Di Cintio chronicles the many journeys each driver made merely for the privilege to turn on their rooflight. Yet these lives aren’t defined by tragedy or frustration but by ingenuity and generosity, hope and indomitable hard work. From night school and sixteen-hour shifts to schemes for athletic careers and the secret Shakespeare of Dylan’s lyrics, Di Cintio’s subjects share the passions and triumphs that drive them. Like the people encountered in its pages, Driven is an unexpected delight, and that most wondrous of all things: a book that will change the way you see the world around you. A paean to the power of personality and perseverance, it’s a compassionate and joyful tribute to the men and women who take us where we want to go.

Driving a cab for more than 30 years Gene Salomon has collected a remarkable selection of stories. He shares the very best in this unforgettable memoir.