The Address Book: What Our Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

by Deirdre Mask

Starting with a simple question, 'what do street addresses do?', Deirdre Mask travels the world and back in time to work out how we describe where we live and what that says about us. From the chronological numbers of Tokyo to the naming of Bobby Sands Street in Iran, she explores how our address - or lack of one - expresses our politics, culture and technology. It affects our health and wealth, and it can even affect the working of our brains.

From Ancient Rome to Kolkata today, from cholera epidemics to tax hungry monarchs, Mask discovers the different ways street names are created, celebrated, and in some cases, banned. Filled with fascinating people and histories, this incisive, entertaining book shows how addresses are about identity, class and race. But most of all they are about power: the power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn't, and why.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Sociology, Race, Social Justice, Book Club

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2020

Reviews

[carol. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have noted plenty of irony in suburban addresses more than once (where are the oaks on Oak Trail? Is Happy Valley Road in a valley, and are the residents all that happy?) So when I read a review of Mask's book about addresses, I jumped at a chance to read it. Mask takes a broad look at addresses, at the history and current issues relating to describing the places we live. Her introduction is essay-worthy of itself, giving a solid overview of where they come from and why we should care. She relates a story of visiting an address-less town in Appalachia and what it means in both concrete (directions to visitors, ambulances, property rights) and philosophical/political senses (after looking at a house on Black Boy Lane), as well as where the names come from once you create an address.

Mask is an engaging, accessible writer, and the early chapters flew by. After the introduction, the book is divided into five sections: Development, Origins, Politics, Race, and Class and Status. It's followed by a hefty bibliography, for those who want to check references and be reassured she isn't merely writing a light-weight interest story. Each section has at least a couple of essays exploring the topic, nominally written around an example city. 

Development looks at Kolkata and the problem of street addresses and slum transformation. "But the lack of addresses was depriving those living in the slums a chance to get out of them. Without an address, it’s nearly impossible to get a bank account. And without a bank account, you can’t save money, borrow money, or receive a state pension." The second section looks at disease and addresses. In London in 1765 all houses were given numbers. When death certificates were done they had the address of the victim, which allowed Dr. John Snow tracing of a cholera epidemic. Brief discussion follows of the cholera epidemic in Haiti and how lack of addresses challenged pinpointing the source.

Under Origins section, 'Rome: How did the ancient Romans navigate' goes more into how addresses came about. Interestingly, despite being one of cultural touchpoints for government organization, the Romans, did not use addresses or street names. I found discussion of a MIT researcher in the 1950s talking about mental maps fascinating. Some cities are ‘highly imageable’ to our senses, which made them more memorable. She also relates a physiological study about how mental maps cause more of the hippocampus to fire, while using GPS/navigation causes less. There is some speculation here in this section, about how ancient Romans might have navigated, using the input from research. 

Also under Origins, 'London: Where do street names come from,' contains some of the details of how street names came about, both in common parlance and in development of the postal system. "House numbers were not invented to help you navigate the city or receive your mail, though they perform those two functions admirably. Instead they were designed to make you easier to tax, imprison, and police. House numbers exist not to help you find your way, but rather to help the government find you." Part of the section also investigates how the recently created addresses helped a doctor track down a cholera outbreak. 'Vienna: What can house numbers teach us about power' continues the theme of government motivations, beginning with how giving house numbers in Vienna helped the ruler discover and track men of fighting age for conscription. This goes a little sideways into surnames as well, especially with government regulation with Native Americans and Jewish people in many countries. There was a French police officer, Guillauté, who created one of the first efforts at police Big Data by devising a mechanical file cabinet and tracking system for all French citizens in the 1750s.

'Philadelphia' is a more historical section, tracing the development of numbered streets in Manhattan and Philadelphia. 'Korea and Japan: Must streets be named' was intriguing in philosophical bent. Try this concept on: "Instead of naming its streets, Tokyo numbers its blocks. Streets are simply the spaces between the blocks. And buildings in Tokyo are, for the most part, numbered not in geographical order, but according to when they were built." Mind blown. Buildings connecting over time, instead of just location. Apparently, it comes from when the owners for each block had responsibility for government. She then segues into the theory of mental images and places, and connects Tokyo's system to it's most prevalent form of writing, Kanji, which is in 'logograms--each character represents a word or idea.' Children learn kanji by writing on grid-paper.

'Politics' examines address names in Iran and their connection to revolutionaries. The section on Berlin looks at how street names changed back and forth with politics: from pre-Nazi; to Nazi period, where any Jewish connected address was renamed; post-WWII when East and West Berlin got new street names again as the city tried to erase the past; and again, post-unification. One of the saddest commentaries came from an interviewee who had discovered she and her hairstylist were raised in the same city but had known the schools under different names: "We cannot talk about places that we have no common name for. Talking about cities, schools, and streets in East Germany, you have to translate between old, new, and very old."

The 'Race' section looks at Confederate names in Hollywood, Florida, and an activist who has been trying to get three streets renamed for over a decade. Another piece looks at MLK Jr. streets across America and one man's effort to beautify his in St. Louis. The final piece 'South Africa: Who belongs on South Africa's street signs,' looks at names in South Africa pre and post-apartheid, and considers the context of British influence and the Afrikaaner culture. This was a fascinating section. Although her essay predates #BLM and the removal of Confederate statutes, it ably demonstrates that the issue has been known and 'debated' endlessly to the disrespect of a formerly enslaved people. It only takes the sections on Berlin and South Africa to understand that what seems to be a refusal to 'erase' part of U.S. history by removing statutes is also about retaining a culture and a power difference embodied by naming prominent streets after infamous insurrectionists looking to maintain slavery--Lee, Hood (John Bell Hood) and Forrest (Nathan Bedford Forrest). To run them through Liberia, the Black section of Hollywood, Florida, is to demonstrate the power differential to the Black citizens.

The last section, 'Class and Status' contains two essays. The first covers Manhattan and status connected to addresses, and developers' push to buy a name. For instance, 1 Central Park West (developed by Trump) had asked the city to change it's designated address from 15 Columbus Circle. It was, but somehow just a few years later, "Time Warner built a tower behind Trump's, naming it One Central Park--even though its address was really 25 Columbus Circle." The last is 'Homelessness: How do you live without an address' revisits some of the issues raised in the slums of India and what not having an address means. One English innovator suggested a mail forwarding system using the 200,000 houses in London that are empty six months of the year, or the 11k that have been unoccupied for over ten years. These two felt surprisingly light, more like specifically written magazine pieces, given how full earlier chapters were. But the quality is good--think The New Yorker. 

As with the introduction, she uses her conclusion to discuss other aspects of addresses, specifically about new efforts by Google and by smaller companies such as what3words to have a world-wide address system. what3words boggles my mind with it's grid system and naming based on three words.

Overall, even the lighter pieces had me thinking. I found it a fascinating read examining the intersection of place and culture. 

cross posted at my blog, where there are links and such. https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2021/...

[Anne Bogel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this urban-planning adjacent book at the suggestion of multiple readers who knew of my obsession with the subject. Mask's thorough exploration of the hidden history and meanings of the street address take her all the way from ancient Rome to contemporary U.S. cities.

I found this fascinating, illuminating, highly relevant, and surprisingly timely: a recurring theme in the book is the role of street addresses in identifying and stopping epidemics.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is gonna be a mediocre review because I did a mediocre job of reading this book. I found The Address Book a fascinating examination of the power of addresses and how they shape our lives. Like most if not everything, even possessing an address relates to how much privilege and power you have in society. Deirdre Mask makes this point in many different ways through her discussions of so many different historical and cultural contexts related to addresses. For example, her writing about how an address is very often necessary to even apply for a job or a medical appointment reinforced the importance of having an address and how much it sucks that an address can be difficult for so many people to attain.

I say that I did a mediocre job reading this book because I felt like very little of the information actually stuck in my brain. I think my three-star rating stems more from a mismatch between me and the book than a flaw in the book. I prefer nonfiction that really delves into one central topic and comes back to that topic even if it approaches it from different angles. I felt like Mask went over so many different examples from so many different sectors of society and periods in history that I got lost. I would recommend this one for those who are interested in urban planning, how geography and poverty intersect, and related topics, but if you’re more of a general nonfiction reader, I’d be more cautious about trying this book out.

[K.J. Charles]

Absolutely fantastic non fiction, the kind that takes what seems to be a small topic and makes you see how big it is. I can't say I've ever particularly thought about addresses--as one born into the number-and-name privilege/trap I never had to. But addresses are about state control, and society, and memory, and hope, and racism, and the wealth divide, and a shedload more.

This is genuinely fascinating, mind-expanding stuff, with a huge amount to reveal about human nature, little of it flattering. Really well written too, and immensely readable. A triumph of its genre.

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe like 4.75 stars but who cares.
Love love love love love love love. This book was everything I was hoping it would be and so much more. Sometimes I just have the urge to learn a butt-load about a random topic and this book delivered in the form of street addresses. It was so fascinating and informative without being info-dumpy, and raised some incredible points that I don't think the average person ever thinks about. I learned about cool charities and companies I had never heard of, and saw historical periods in a new light. If the topic sounds remotely interesting to you, I would definitely pick this one up. Each chapter covers a different area of the world and concept, and some of them were definitely more interesting to me than others, but I think there is something to enjoy on every page.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little while ago I finished reading a book called The Stack and a friend here on good reads said I might enjoy this book – and she was right. I enjoyed it very much. In a way this is what I call a white board book – think of a topic and do a mind map of everything you can link to that topic, organise the ideas and then write the paragraphs and there you are, you’ve got a book. That sounds like I am being critical. But I think these books definitely have their place in the universe. In fact, if you think about it too deeply it becomes clear that virtually every book is a kind of white board book – but I like the category all the same. Because, like birds, some books are better examples of white board books (this one, for example) in much the same way that pidgins are better examples of birds than emus or penguins are.

Street addresses are complicated things and so lots of people who are much smarter than I am have spent a lot of time trying to make sense of them. My mother once told me that one of the strange things about coming to Australia – when compared to Belfast – was that streets held their names in Belfast. I mean, if you started off on a street called New Street, say, and you kept walking and didn’t turn off New Street, well, it was likely to still be New Street no matter how far you walked. That certainly isn’t always the case in Australia. For example, there is a road that goes all the way around Australia – it is sort of called Highway 1, except it isn’t actually called that anywhere in particular. It is called things like Princes Highway, Dandenong Road, West Gate Freeway, Geelong Ring Road, or CityLink. But while this is fair enough, given it is such a long road, there are other streets in Melbourne that change their name once they go from one suburb to another. And these don’t even have to be very large roads.

I once worked at Melbourne City Council and, working as an Archivist, got to speak to people working in the survey department. One of them told me that at one stage – in the late 1800s I guess, they employed an Enumerator, and this man’s job was to give houses numbers. He was a large man, apparently, and had to be, since telling people their new street number sometimes resulted in fights – and not just verbal, but physical fights. People take this stuff quite seriously.

While we are talking about this, one of the only streets in the central Melbourne area to have changed its name was Stephen Street, which became Exhibition Street. It got the name change from the 1880 world exhibition held in Melbourne – but the reason was more to do with Stephen Street being known as the red light district of Melbourne, than the coming exhibition. In fact, as I was saying before, the name had become so stigmatised that part of Stephen Street (from Collins Street to Flinders) became Collins Place.

In fact, Collins Street is such an upmarket street address that Nauru House, which really ought to have a Little Collins Street address, bought a property on Collins Street, pulled it down to make a little lane way, and then had its address that of the little property it had pulled down. This book contains US examples of the same thing – although, some of those sound even more extreme, given some of the buildings with a certain street address don’t have any frontage on the street they are supposed to be ‘on’ at all.

The author mentions some research done by school children in Geelong (a city down the road from where I live) that found that if you lived on a street that has negative connotations, it impacts the selling price of your house. One of the names they mentioned was Beaver Street. Now, I used to work in a trade union with some lesbians. One of whom had just bought a house in Beaver Street. The other walked into the lunchroom and bowed before her. Basically saying, ‘you are now top lesbian’.

There is a nice chapter here where the problems of not having an address are discussed at length. This is particularly a problem for the homeless, who by definition don’t have an address and then have problems caused in getting to stop being homeless. You know, it is almost impossible to get a job if you don’t have an address, but if you don’t get a job, it is pretty hard to get an address – so that, for every catch there is another 22.

There are also the problems associated with changing street names (now called ‘cancel culture’ by some morons). Examples include how the Nazis changed street names to celebrate their heroes, only for the East Germans to change these again to celebrate their heroes, only for the united Germans to change these yet again – so that people claimed they couldn’t work out where they were now, especially if they had returned to a place they had known after a number of years away – is this Karl Marx Street or Helmet Kohl Place?

There’s a long bit in this on streets in Iran named after Bobby Sands – the Irish political prisoner. As the author points out – there are no Bobby Sands Streets in Ireland, North or Republic. She also quotes a joke by that Rock guy that got slapped recently at some award ceremony in the US saying that if you ever find yourself on Martin Luther King Road, you should probably run. That is, it is likely to be in a poor, Black suburb.

A Greek friend of mine when I was growing up said he had been watching a current affair program where a group of Anglos were protesting a street that was going to be named something like Daedalus Street – anyway, something Greek – or ‘woggy’ as the Anglos were likely to have said. The journalist asked something like ‘are you opposed to the name because it is ethnic?’ And my friend said that what really upset him about this was that one of the women protestors asked, in mock surprise, ‘Is it?’ There is lots of this sort of thing in the book too.

I liked this book – it is a quick read, but it has more content than you might otherwise expect.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and thoughtful book. The significance of having an address and understanding the full impact of what that means is more important than folks realize. The seemingly banal topic is anything but. In order to exercise and maintain the rights and privileges in the world, you need to be able to convey a location that describes where you can be found. The downside to that is of course that you can be found. People rioted over having an address as Mask points out:

in the eighteenth century, residents protested violently when officials marched through their villages painting numbers on their homes [sic]. The people understood the new numbers meant that they could now be found, taxed, policed, and governed, whether they liked it or not. They understood that addressing the world is not a neutral act.

Interesting how we go about establishing streets and naming them and how political that can be. Worldwide significant amounts of people do not have addresses and it severely impacts/limits their quality of life and choices. Not naming streets and locations is a tool of oppression. The process of how streets are named can also be a tool of control. Not being able to identify where you live affects nearly everything. Ability to get a job, to get healthcare, to get standard utilities and most importantly it limits the ability for government to direct funding to maintain or improve areas. In South Africa, part of what fueled and empowered apartheid was the ability to make thousands of people invisble by denying them street addresses. In the US (though not in this book), we saw voting rights suppressed by the North Dakota state legislature when they denied the right to vote to people without a street address with the full knowledge that Indian reservations frequently do not have street addresses (this example came to my mind immediately after reading about other parts of the world without street names). This book also covers things that one would not anticipate when discussing addresses, such as basic urban planning. Mask explains the historical significance of the grid approach to most cities. The problems encountered as towns and communities grew so big that they combine with similar street names. How communities go about renaming streets and the incredible amounts of rancor and consideration that goes into it. The idea that some parts of the world do not consider street names important but they name the blocks in which people live. The notion that surnames were not that common prior to the 14th century. Instead they would look for "John down by the pier". And what about identifying locations in the future?!? An ongoing experiment called "What 3 Words" is fascinating. The concept is to identify any location in the world in 3x3 meter increments with randomly assigned words. Each description is unique. My high school is located at "canny.museum.broker" Meanwhile the Waikiki Resort Hotel is located at "punks.desk.charcoal" It's a fascinating concept. Check out your 3 word descriptors at https://what3words.com/.

Simply put, Mask has opened my eyes and my mind to the concept of addresses and how I (we) take it for granted. A brilliant examination of a not so mundane subject approached in an engaging and thoughtful way. Mask writes with a purpose. No philosophical or opinionated diatribes. Her historical contexts and chosen anecdotes speak for themselves. The book took me a while to get through because there is so much information, food for thought and concepts to ponder presented in an organized and well considered manner. Highly recommended!!

Almost 4.5 fascinated Stars

Read on kindle

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun, informative, wide-ranging and highly readable book, all centered on street addresses. Mask draws from an admirably broad range of material, leaping from the difficulties of navigation in rural West Virginia causing ambulances to go astray to the local government of Kolkata refusing to dignify slum-dwellers with named streets; from the Romans’ landmark-based navigation to the controversial Enlightenment project of numbering houses to better tax and police residents; from the renaming of streets after revolutions and coups to the fights over who should be memorialized in street names in South Africa and the American South. Street names are the organizing principle, but really this is a book about history, politics and culture, as reflected through street names and navigation. There’s a whole chapter on mapping cholera epidemics (in 19th century England and modern Haiti) to discover their sources, another on development and plutocracy in New York City, a third on the differences between Western and Japanese mental maps.

So this book is a treat for anyone interested in reading stories from a wide variety of times and places, all very readable and evidently well-researched, and with contemporary relevance. The blurb on the back from someone claiming the book changed his life seems way over-the-top—I don’t think this book is even intended to do that, but rather to educate and entertain, while raising questions about race, class, and how history is remembered. It covers so much ground in a relatively short book that there isn’t time for a huge amount of depth on any one subject, but it does so without ever feeling rushed or superficial. I enjoyed this a lot, learned from it and recommend it.

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The simple street address is not only a relatively new concept, it is controversial everywhere it is implemented. Deirdre Mask has spent years traveling and discovering how people get on without addresses, how different implementations work (or don't), how addresses have figured in history, and how the digital world wants to change it all. She has put it together in her charming and engaging The Address Book.

The even/odd address system that most Americans are so accustomed to began in Philadelphia just three hundred years ago. It works, and yet Chicago had to to invent its own system 200 years later. The Japanese number blocks and not houses (and they are not alone in that). Some assign numbers by the year the building went up instead of sequentially. And many, many places still have no identifying systems in place at all. Mask uses the example of ancient Rome, a metropolis of a million, where without addresses, directions to find anyone or anything were, to put it mildly, involved. And yet, the city functioned as no other before it. Somewhat less functional was her experience in modern-day West Virginia, where a lack of street names and addresses led her to ask numerous people for directions, and still failing, had someone lead her almost there.

While that might seem unreasonable in a connected world, it does mean that locals become experts. Their knowledge grows vast, having to know people, landmarks, ruins, individual trees, people's homes, and what might have been there along the way before. Mask points out that GPS requires almost no brain power, and Americans use less and less of it make their way anywhere anymore.

In western society at least, not having a street address is fatal. It's essentially impossible to open a bank account, obtain a legitimate ID, rent an apartment, or get a job without one. This artificial prejudice is primarily a legal complication, of course. The government wants everyone to be traceable, for income tax purposes, for criminal pursuit, and for good old control. The unintended consequences include marginalizing an already marginal group, for life. Once they fall into that trap, there is rarely escape. Schemes to allow the homeless to use the address of a shelter, or vacant housing, have gone nowhere. If you don't have a street address, you are a non-entity. In the UK, organizations like the National Health Service and Unemployment services persist in using snail mail. If you don't get the letter and miss your appointment, it's curtains. You are canceled. She says: "Without an address, you are limited to communicating only with people who know you. And it's often people who don't know you who can most help you."

Address data is problematic. It has many great uses, but also dark sides. Addresses can mark people as living in bad districts, or racially dominated districts, poor or rich, religiously focused or mixed. Assumptions are assumed, loans approved or denied, interest rates lowered or raised, 911 calls answered or not, depending on the address attached. In the attempts over the years to assign addresses, people did not want them because they didn't want the junk mail, or to be followed or trackable. Freedom from street addresses is very real for some. Long before there were National ID numbers and Social Security Numbers to protest, there were street addresses that primarily benefited the monarch, the police and the tax collector.

The Address Book wanders globally and throughout history, with Mask injecting history lessons with great storytelling abilities. She tells the stories of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, of Marie-Theresa of Austria, the slums of Kolkata, how European Jews got their last names and navigating Tokyo all by their connections to street names and numbers.

Mask says the discussion of street names and numbers can dominate local politics, shooting to the top of the agenda when up for discussion. This can be a near daily thing in New York or Paris, where renaming is all but constant. Or it can happen when a community wants to remove Confederate names in the USA, or Nazi names in Germany. Some will cling to tradition and claim they will be lost otherwise. Some don't like the replacements. Developers will maneuver to obtain chic addresses, forcing the current user to change everything. It's always a struggle. This seems to be particularly true of England, where the original street names could be particularly descriptive of what went on there, in a very raw and crude sense. Today, those names add character, and higher valuations. Lane tops Boulevard in sales pricing, and embarrassing names can cause sales to take forever. I for one have long joked I could never live at the corner of Tinker Bell Boulevard and Goofy Gulch in a Disney development. On the other hand, living at Mortgage Heights and Default Drive is no privilege either.

For the near future, companies like Google and what3words are creating global systems that computers (of course) generate. What3words, for example, has divided the planet into three-metre (10 ft) squares, each labeled by three common words. Look up a three word combo on its website, and the map function takes you to a very specific spot that needs no further description. Sadly, it is in English, which does not work for everyone . So the company is developing other language systems, and you will have to know what language the three word are in and choose that subsystem in order for it to work. Google is doing the same thing with a seven digit code that is most unmemorable. Unlike The Address Book, which is a delight, it kinda takes the romance and character out of it.

David Wineberg

[Henry · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst books I've come across in many years. I had a lot of faith in this as I have always been fascinated by street names and addressing in general. It turns out to be a mishmash of many "stories" that are not even remotely related to the subject. Out of the 16 chapters including the introduction and conclusion, there maybe three or four of them mildly interesting and with contents that are some what related to the subject matter.

It does sound like that the author has input significant research effort for the book, considering the many times she mentioned calling up or visiting somebody for a conversation, and the fact that for 270-odd pages of main content there're close to 40 pages of notes. The product of these endeavours is however disappointing as I can easily questions some of the conclusions or observations drawn from these researches. In other cases, I struggle to understand why those stories matter at all.

It is unbelievable how a professional writer like the author of this book failed to select relevant materials and structure the book in a way that will do justice to the subject. I can imagine so many different ways to tackle this subject more interestingly than what is presented in this book.

I've never said this in my life about any book, but, can I get a refund?

[Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder · Rating 5 out of 5]

A History of Street Naming & Numbering (and Renaming & Renumbering)
Review of the Profile Books hardcover edition (April 2020)

House numbers were not invented to help you navigate the city or receive your mail, though they perform these two functions admirably. Instead, they were designed to make you easier to tax, imprison, and police. House numbers exist not to help you find your way, but rather to help the government find you. - pgs. 91-92 in The Address Book

Although there are examples of earlier instances, such as on a Paris bridge in 1512, house numbering had its largest onset in the 18th century, when Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) instituted a 1,100,399 empire-wide house numbering in order to track subjects for the possible “conscription of souls” for the Austro-Hungarian army in 1770.

Despite its major road infrastructure that emanated from Ancient Rome itself, with elaborate constructions such as the Appian Way, the actual streets of the ancient city were not named at all, so all directions had to be given by commonly known landmarks.

Facts and trivia such as the above are spread throughout The Address Book, and unless one is already an expert in urban geography, much of it will likely be new to average people such as myself. Your degree of interest in this sort of knowledge will likely drive your speed of reading of this book. I was fascinated by all of it, but it still took me over a month to read as there was only so much I could absorb at once.

Deirdre Mask bookends this wonderful history with modern day world examples where the need of address has become a pressing requirement for those in need of social assistance such as in refugee camps or slums or for the homeless seeking employment or to simply identify locations without the need for conventional addresses. In Chapter 1 Kolkata, she investigates the NGO Addressing the Unaddressed, whose “sole mission is to give addresses to every slum in India, starting in Kolkata.” In Conclusion The Future: Are Street Addresses Doomed, she investigates the what3words project which divides the entire planet into 64 Trillion 3 metre by 3 metres squares which are each identified by a specific 3 word combination.

I read The Address Book thanks to my subscription to Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company's Year of Reading 2020 New Releases.

Estonian Trivia
“Even today, across Europe, instructions about street naming often include a rule rejecting the use of numbers. Estonia … has banned them by law.” – page 115 The Address Book

[Therese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non-fiction isn’t usually my thing, but it seems like I’m on a roll...and loving it! I read this for book club and found it absolutely fascinating. The author explores the history of assigning street names and numbers and why that’s important, which goes way beyond simply being able to provide directions to a location. For example, it allowed aristocracy to get a grip on who their subjects were and exactly how many there were...handy for taxation or calling up an army. And of course, people’s various reactions to being assigned a number that got painted on the front of their house...a benefit or a loss of freedom?Other aspects of addresses are explored, too, like social mapping, a characterization of wealth and power (or lack, thereof), the ability to track disease outbreak, urban organization, and of course, just being able to easily find somebody, especially during an emergency.

It was also interesting to learn about an alternative, global addressing system called what3words, where the world has been divided into three meter squares, each being given a unique identifier made up of three words. Useful for finding an out of the way home or business, or meeting up with friends in a crowd. I’ve already downloaded the app. 😊

[Alex Sarll]

Yes, as in a whole book about addresses, part of that non-fiction genre which answers questions you didn't know you had about something which, at least if you live in the urban West, you've probably taken for granted as beneath the threshold of notice. But being from Profile/Serpent's Tail, not a publisher known for Christmas cash-ins (and indeed, it's not out until April), it takes a far more political angle than many such. We open in rural West Virginia, where most people don't have addresses and plenty would like to keep it that way, retaining a deep backwoods suspicion of the government in all its forms, even if the current set-up means people dying because paramedics can't follow idiosyncratic directions down confusing lanes. Amusingly, some chapters later in Vienna, one of the birthplaces of house numbers (like lightbulbs, they seemed to spring up all over around the same time), an expert on the subject tells the author they're right. Yes, there are house number experts, or one, at least – Anton Tantner, whose book House Numbers makes Mask's theme seem shamelessly broad by comparison. "House numbers, he tells his readers, were not invented to help you navigate the city or receive your mail, though they perform these two tasks admirably. Instead they were designed to find you, tax you, imprison you, protect you. Rather than helping you find your way, house numbers help the government find you." That's a few chapters on, though. First we jump from the American countryside to Tottenham, and a street I myself boggled at when I first passed it back in my North London days, where Mask briefly considered buying a house which had a lot in its favour; still, you can see why an African American writer might have opted not to live on Black Boy Lane.

Elsewhere, Mask visits the slums of Kolkata, where a new project is intending to give even the most makeshift dwellings addresses – albeit, she notes, on a different system to the city proper; imperfect improvements to a system broken on so many levels are a running theme in the book. In the meantime, it's dispiriting if hardly surprising that a home-grown, democratically elected communist government should have been just as ready to dismiss the slum-dwellers as the Raj ever was, concerned that giving them addresses would mean admitting they were there in the first place. Not that the city will be unique in having parallel systems, which turn out to be surprisingly common, albeit along various different axes: Czech houses have a number for government and another for directional use; in Florence, residential and business purposes have different numbers. And plenty of other ways have been found to make a mess of the whole business, not least when money gets involved. In NYC, addresses can be changed for $11,000 – peanuts in property developer terms. But even one of the city's most famous addresses, Times Square, turns out to have been a vanity renaming to match London's 'Arsenal' station (GILLESPIE ROAD WILL RISE AGAIN!). Nor is the issue unique to Manhattan; in Chicago, a woman named Nancy Clay died because firefighters hadn't realised that the building One Illinois Place wasn't actually situated on Illinois Place. Something horribly Grenfell about that death by property prices, which makes one take a real glee in one London project Mask finds, a solution to the problem whereby homeless people almost have as many problems following from not having an address as they do from not having a home. Now, the proposal runs, they can be given dummy addresses of unoccupied properties, which will forward to post offices or the like. And what's one of the biggest batches of unoccupied properties? The ones the wealthy have bought purely as investments and then left empty. Sure, it would be better to actually let the cold and hungry live in them, but in the meantime, nicking their coveted postcodes would be a wonderful start.

To the British reader, some stories may be familiar, such as that of postal reformer Rowland Hill. It's poignant to be reminded, having seen how well the idea of state-funded broadband went down, that the penny post was also "a measure many thought would bankrupt the nation", and which instead proved a huge money-spinner. But as with John Snow and his ghost map, Mask uses old stories to make newer points; in Snow's case, as a contrast with this decade's cholera outbreak in Haiti where, unlike in Snow's Soho, there were determined efforts at obfuscating the UN's responsibility. So a story usually produced to show how knowledge saves lives is flipped - and, as she points out, while Snow may have ended one local epidemic, the wholesale eradication of cholera as a feature of London life came with the great sewer-building works...which were largely about getting rid of 'miasma'. A less grave example: most of my smutty-minded compatriots will know about Gropecunt Lane, but here its appearance serves to set up a hilarious though apparently sincere passage of charming American innocence over the campaign to rename a street in the West Midlands town of Rowley Regis: "I thought it sounded elegant – the light trill of the word Bell paired with the serious and solid End."

I suppose the story of William Penn, Philadelphia and the birth of the US grid system may well be as familiar to Americans as Hill, Snow and Bell End are to us, but it was new to me. And I'm fairly sure no Briton could have written with such equanimity about the various streets around the world named for Bobby Sands – although, perhaps helped by her husband coming from Cookstown, Mask addresses the Troubles* with considerably more nuance than most American writers manage. Elsewhere she offers an intriguing investigation into whether linguistics affects addressing conventions, with reference to Japanese and Korean, albeit one which ends on a wonderfully bathetic note, and takes us to South Africa's Constitutional Court, where the judges don't split along the left-right lines of the US supreme court, or even racial ones - except when it comes to renaming streets. An area in which Mandela erred on the side of caution ("a tactic to make the revolution seem less revolutionary"), but his successor Mbeki veered the other way. Some of these were names including racial slurs, or commemorating Afrikaaner heroes, where one can entirely see his point - but then you get to Mangosuthu Highway, named for an Inkatha Freedom Party leader, where switching that to ANC activist Griffiths Mxenge is nothing nobler than party favouritism. These complex, imperfect situations recur over and over, right through to the conclusion, where Mask talks about the way projects such as what3words usefully offer addresses for the previously unaddressable, while also noting that as the product of for-profit tech firms, the potential implications are troubling. Along the way we look at whether Romans had addresses, and if not how they managed, and encounter the concept of 'imageability', or more widely memorability, which explains why Boston and Florence are easier to navigate than Jersey City. It's a book of which I've been dropping snippets into conversations since I started reading it, and which I'd be buying at least one person for Christmas if only it weren't for that aforementioned release date issue. Ah well, maybe next year, if only we aren't all living amidst the rubble by then.

*I suppose that's yet another 20th century franchise due for an unwanted reboot soon.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Paya · Rating 4 out of 5]

To jest super przystępna, dobrze i wciągająco napisana książka na tematy bardzo poważne. Przyglądając się adresom i metodom projektowania przestrzeni miejskiej, czyli tematom, które mogą wydawać się przezroczyste i oczywiste, autorka analizuje, jak te kwestie wpływają na poziom życia, jak wpisują się w nierówności społeczne, jak stanowią one polityczne narzędzie i wreszcie jak mogą pomóc w awansie społecznym. Duży plus za dodatek o polskich adresach – dobrze było spojrzeć na nasze polskie podwórkowe przepychanki w kontekście nazw ulic w szerszym kontekście.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deirdre Mask, who writes for publications such as the New Yorker and Atlantic, toured the world, coming up with information on the influence street addresses wield. She discusses the origins of street addresses and different systems used around the world. Japan uses blocks instead of streets. She (and others) attribute it to the way persons learn writing in various cultures. She goes on to discuss the role politics and race play in the process. She then turns to a discussion of social strata by showing how the elite purchase custom addresses and how homeless persons fail to move beyond their circumstances by lack of an address. At the end she discusses the future of addresses by looking at emerging trends using big data. While parts of the book were interesting, the book did not engage me as I hoped it would. I tend to dislike books that rely more on journalistic perspectives bringing the first person into the discussion of a possible academic topic. While the book was more engaging than an academic tome might be, the first person perspective creates a distrust of information presented, particularly in this day of blind endnotes. The book used these detested blind endnotes. Many of these referred to web articles rather than academic publications. The book included an index. One of the book's weaknesses was a failure to examine rural America adequately. While she examined some names in rural West Virginia, she did not look at the many places where roads are simply numbered with "County Road XXX" with XXX being a number. She simply failed to look at the rest of the country for patterns. I conclude that those who name streets should refrain from naming them after persons. Someone heroic to one generation may represent something else entirely to future generations.

[Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t craving for a book about street addresses. However, this was such an expectedly thoughtful and detailed book which expanded well beyond my initial impression. Diving deep into race, politics, identity, class, geography, and culture, Deirdre Mask unlocks a treasure trove of fascinating stories and histories. I had never fully appreciated how central and all-encompassing a seemingly banal street address could be until reading this book. The Address Book really is for everyone whose ever had an address.

[Stormye Hendrix · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned some stuff but it felt like it was all over the place and the author interjecting herself into the narrative, along with her aggressive adverb usage, was distracting.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re like most people, you’ve seldom given much thought to the significance of addresses. My own thinking about the subject hasn’t gone much beyond the fact that I’ve liked the sound of some of my addresses over the years more than others. I did once research the name of a hundred-year-old street I lived on, curious about its history, only to discover its mundane origin: even that long ago, just like today, developers often named streets after their family members.

The subtitle of this fascinating book provides a concise summary of its content: “What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.” To answer these questions, author Deirdre Mask visits a wide range of locations around the world, both urban and rural, from Manhattan to West Virginia to St. Louis, from London to Kolkata to South Africa, and more.

In Kolkata, she examines an addressing project in the slums that has the potential to transform the lives of the residents. Likewise, in Haiti and West Virginia, she explores how the lack of street names and addresses has hampered residents’ access to services like medical care. Looking at the subject historically, she discusses the origins of street names and house numbers in several cities and compares the traditional address systems of Korea and Japan to ask whether streets must be named at all.

Several chapters of the book examine the politics of street names—how communities memorialize or honor their past, and how this can lead to controversies about what history is worth honoring and what is best consigned to the dustbin. Examples include revolutionary street names in Iran, Nazi and Jewish street names in Germany, Confederate street names in the American South, and streets honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in numerous cities.

The last section of the book explores class and status through a comparison of the practice of Manhattan elites buying more valuable addresses (yes, Donald Trump makes an appearance here) versus the multiple problems faced by the homeless population. Wealth vs. poverty, power vs. powerlessness.

These are just a few of the topics that Mask discusses in the book. Much of the information she presents was new to me, or at least new in the sense that I hadn’t seriously thought about it before. It’s the kind of nonfiction book that I really enjoy—a book that leads me to see familiar things in a new light. When such a book is also well-written, as this one is, it’s a winner.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book! I learned a lot - not the least of which is that most people on earth DON'T have an address. . . that great identifier, problem-solver and the ultimate label on WHO that resident is.

I simply had never thought about it much. I've often given myself over to thinking about the land on which I live. The land I am pretentious enough to consider "mine", a possession purchased and tended and forever branded with my beneficence just by mere existence and presence. Yikes.

Again - fascinating book. I listened to this, and think next time I read it will want an e-book or physical book in order to notate. There was a lot of information, and truly across a large spectrum of subjects having to do with the land, the process of "addressing", the peoples that come and go over large swatches of land - with all their moving boundaries and nationalities, wars and victories, battles fought, lost and won, and even exploring into future ways to category, label and designate. Especially captured by What3Words - even got the app!

This is one of those books of a Specific Interest. If you aren't into it put it down and move on. But if you feel even a little tingle of interest. . .finishing will most likely leave you with a satisfying addition to your brain's database. It did mine. I'm feeling mighty smug and smart about it.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a child, I looked at atlases for fun. As an adult, I'm a social studies teacher who looks at school district maps for gerrymandering of boundary lines that create defacto segregation. The Address Book ticked so many intellectual boxes for me. I was totally engrossed in the evolution and importance of addresses. From a craft perspective, I enjoyed the way the author started the book by addressing (literally and figuratively) the rural areas of West Virginia and slums in Kolkata, their lack of addresses, and the importance of having a number and street on which you live and ended the book by discussing new technologies and strategies for giving addresses to the unhoused.

Interspersed with the historical research, Mask provided humor and social justice commentaries. I found myself smirking like a fifth grader at "Butt Hole Lane" and shaking my head at the pettiness of "vanity addresses" in Manhattan. The chapters on Confederate street names and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards were especially poignant in 2020. I was incredibly excited, as a teacher of psychology and geography, when she talked about how language affect how cultures create addresses. For example, in languages like English and Hebrew, which are written linearly, streets and linear concepts rule when it comes to addresses. However, in languages like Japanese and Korean, characters that are written in blocks are how the language is built. As a result, Tokyo is organized in blocks as opposed to linear streets. Linguistic determinism meets geographic determinism. So.Exciting.

In short, I loved this book and have been telling everyone to read it.

[MIKE Watkins Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros:

1. The book truly shows how important addresses are. We often think that the main essential ingredient that homeless people need in order to thrive is a home, but it's not a physical home it's an address.

"By definition homeless people don't have homes. But an address is not a home. AN address today, is an identity; it's a way for society to check that you are not just a person but the person you say you are. How many times have you been asked to show proof of address to register a child in school, to apply for a job, to vote, to open a new account? It's not for the bank manager to come and meet you at the door. In the modern world, in short, you are your address."-The Address Book

Additionally, addresses are needed in order to combat diseases and organize cities.

1A. The book does a great job of showcasing why addresses, specifically address names, are important for other reasons as well; some address names empower people, some aid in revelations, and others tell stories.


Cons:

1. The book never provides you with a clear cut conclusion or takeaway for each chapter.

2. The book focuses more so on the stories behind the address/address name rather than the said address/address name itself at least for the last half of the book.

3. The chapter on race is repetitive and often feature similar stories that go in this order. An argument/war breaks out between 2 groups...one group dominates the other group....that dominating group determines street names....other groups get upset and fight back...change happens.

[Holly Dowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely fascinating. The subtitle gives you a good idea of the contents, but doesn’t let you know how fun it is to read. Deirdre Mask’s writing style is incredibly approachable as she explains the history and implications of addressing around the world. She couples anecdotes with thoroughly researched analysis. I learned so much from this book and found myself sad it was over because it sort of felt like sitting at a bar with a captivating friend who knows a ton and can tell engaging stories for hours with both humor and substance.

[〰️Beth〰️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having done some study of urban planning and development, I was interested when one of my groups picked this as a group read.

Enjoyed how this looked at multiple global areas in regards to the need for street names and why that is important. In many ways a timely book, full of wonderful information, and a much more engaging book than your basic geography or urban planning text. I hope many people will pick this up to read and realize how important a number and a name on a road, be it macadam, gravel or dirt, can be for those who live on that undesignated stretch of land.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was absolutely excellent. I never really thought about the fact that addresses really say so much about politics and our world. Fascinating when you shift the lens slightly, how you can look at the same thing but see something completely different

[Maya Winshell · Rating 5 out of 5]

looooved this read!! i’ve never read a nonfiction book SO far-reaching in both timespan and discipline. i feel like deirdre mask is powered by the same kind of crazy, knowledge-hungry ambition that drove me to write my college thesis that spanned 100+ years of san francisco history and tried to answer 5 thematically different questions at once. girl after my own heart. but she’s WAY cooler than i’ll ever be—she wears the hats of historian, journalist, anthropologist, urban planner, neuroscientist, linguist, and bestie, all at once. her writing is amazingly accessible and conversational; her voice is honest, ironic, and often drew laughs out of me while reading what could have been totally mundane information if not for the author’s …joie de vivre. lol
would recommend, 100%. i’ll be rereading for certain!!!

[Wojciech Szot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Problemy z adresami to - wydawałoby się - polska specjalność. Komunizacja, dekomunizacja, na końcu jeszcze ponowna dekomunizacja. A przecież to nie wszystko - tuż po wojnie trzeba było zmienić tysiące nazw miejscowości i ulic na tzw. “Ziemiach Odzyskanych”. Efektem tego - jak pisze Max Suski w polskim dodatku do książki Deirdre Mask - było choćby to, że niektórzy z nas zaczęli żyć w Nędzy. Nie było chyba optymistów w komisji nazewniczej, która przerobiła tak nazwę miasteczka Nensa (lub Nendza).

Jako osoba przez lata mieszkająca na dawnej Schützenstraße od dawna z zamiłowaniem przyglądam się polskim problemom z adresami. A dzięki “Adresom” (tłum. Agnieszka Wilga) amerykańskiej reporterki mogłem dowiedzieć się, że podobne problemy są na całym świecie. Naszą po nim wycieczkę rozpoczynamy w Kolkacie od spotkania z ludźmi, którzy nadają adresy domom (a raczej chatynkom) mieszkańców tamtejszych slumsów. Brak oficjalnego adresu sprawia, że nie mają dostępu do pomocy socjalnej, nie można ubiegać się op bonuy żywnościowe czy dostęp do opieki położniczej. Rozwiązaniem problemu wydaje się nadanie każdemu domowi adresu na podstawie współrzędnych geograficznych. Ale czy to na pewno rozwiązanie problemu? Nowy, specjalny adres przecież od razu wskazuje na miejsce zamieszkania danej osoby i może ułatwić dyskryminację biednych mieszkańców tego jednego z największych indyjskich miast.

Adres bowiem potrzebny jest nie tylko człowiekowi, ale i państwu, które dzięki temu może lepiej zarządzać (czyt.: śledzić) obywateli, nakładać na nich podatki, czy zwyczajnie - w krajach niezbyt demokratycznych - prześladować. Mask w tym robiącym wrażenie reportażu sięga zarówno do historii i pokazuje jak kształtowała się siatka ulic i ich nazewnictwo w Stanach Zjednoczonych czy Londynie, jak orientowali się w przestrzeni Rzymianie i dlaczego pod pewnymi względami nie różnili się od nowojorskich taksówkarzy. To też opowieść o tym jak urządzić przestrzeń miejską tak, by była przyjazna mieszkańcom - czy lepiej żyje się wśród wijących się uliczek i zaułków, czy w mieście gdzie większość ulic krzyżuje się pod kątem prostym?

Bardzo podoba mi się w tej książce fakt, że autorka nie tylko sięgnęła po wiedzę historyczną, przeprowadziła dziesiątki wywiadów z mieszkańcami miast, ale i sięgnęła po opracowania naukowe, a do tego poddaje w wątpliwość własne ustalenia - bo może posiadanie adresu wcale nie jest takie zbawienne?

Oczywistym tematem, o którym pisze Mask jest nazwa ulicy jako symbol statusu. Jak trafić do “czarnej” dzielnicy w amerykańskim mieście? Zapytajcie o ulicę Martina Luthera Kinga i bez problemu do niej traficie. Autorka opisuje Melvina White’a, mieszkańca St. Louis, który postanowił podnieść z nędzy tamtejszą ulicę Kinga i uczynić z niej miejsce lubiane przez mieszkańców. Mimo zaangażowania lokalnego uniwersytetu, pomocy naukowców i firm, wciąż mu się to w pełni nie udaje.

Kilka tygodni temu w prokrastynacyjnym szale przeglądania stołecznych ofert mieszkaniowych trafiłem na całkiem przyjemne mieszkanko na ulicy… Polskich Skrzydeł. No nie - pomyślałem - naprawdę nie chcę mieć czegoś takiego w adresie. Jakże zabawne jest jednak to, że Polskie Skrzydła znajdują się tuż przy ulicy Dedala. Ktoś wykazał się poczuciem humoru, lub dość realistycznym spojrzeniem na polskie próby podboju świata.

O tym dlaczego nazwy ulic i numery domów pomagają w walce z pandemiami, a brytyjskie “niegrzeczne” nazwy nie mają nic - niestety - wspólnego z ludzką seksualnością czy fizjologią - Mask pisze ciekawie i tylko czasem przesadza w wyjaśnianiu nam dość oczywistych aspektów historycznych. Książka jest jednak napisana dla amerykańskiego czytelnika, który przeważnie o historii Europy wie tyle, zatem możemy sobie kilka stron lektury darować, by pozwolić się zabrać reporterce w naprawdę ciekawe wyprawy.

W mojej rodzinnej miejscowości bardzo długo utrzymywała się ulica Marksa, która krzyżowała się z Placem Odrodzenia. Autora “Manifestu komunistycznego” miał zastąpić generał Stefan Grot-Rowecki. Sprawa dotarła do Wojewódzkiego Sądu Administracyjnego, który przywrócił zarówno Marksa jak i Pstrowskiego. Najbardziej jednak podoba mi się zamiana Przodowników Pracy na Anny Walentynowicz, która - o ironio - była oficjalnie określoną przodowniczką pracy.

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one book I probably would not have read if it had not been selected as a book club read. Why would I want to read about street addresses???
The author did extensive work and research to explore the "influence" of street addresses, how they came to be as well as the down side of not having a fixed address. She explored the origins of street naming, from ancient Rome to more modern times throughout the world. One point made, which I had never considered, was for those who lack addresses (i.e. slums of Kolkata) they were deprived of opportunities to get out of the slums since addresses were needed to apply for jobs, obtain a license, apply for insurance much less open a bank account. Mask explored how certain street names (i.e. MLK) are typically found in poverty-stricken areas, while others identified where concentration of Jews lived in Nazi Germany for ease in round ups, to how money and prestige is tied to specific addresses (i.e. Manhattan).
I feel the book is well written, with many anecdotes to support points made (I sometimes felt the point could have been made with fewer anecdotes). If you are a city or urban planner you would probably really enjoy reading this book. For me, it was more of a mismatch with my reading preferences. Rating: 3.5 *

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely a fun little book, it was easy to read and I enjoyed it, but it’s not going to blow your mind at any turn. The examples are all anecdotal and miss the historical context that draws together the idea that mapping and addresses have long been used by the state to identify, register, or control groups of people. It just felt like her conclusions were pretty lazy (tech companies like google created new address systems and that’s good bc they’re open source lol or she’s sure that somehow Facebook will find a way to monetize their geolocation system??) Basically, shes a journalist and you can tell.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply can't do such an absorbing, wide-ranging and eye-opening book justice here, so I will settle for reporting on the highlights. I had no idea addresses and house numbering in particular meant so much to so many people over the ages! It's something I had truly taken for granted.

In West Virginia some people are suspicious about having an actual street address believing that “Addresses aren’t just for emergency services they also exist so people can find you, police you, tax you, and try to sell you things you don’t need through the mail.” They have good points; however, the author ponders on how the emergency services can find you at 3am on directions only and how would you explain where you lived if you’d had a stroke?

In India, you must have a street address to obtain a mandatory ID card. That’s a real challenge for people for people living in the slums of Kolkata previously known as Calcutta. A street address not only help establish identity it also helps people feel included. “Employees of world Bank soon found that addresses were helping to empower the people who live there by helping them to feel part of society.”

Having an address expands your world and your resources for living. “Without an address you are limited to communicating only with people that know you. It’s often people who don’t know you who can most help you.”

When it comes to mapping cities not all cities are equal. For example, Boston has many special features to navigate by, I think of them as waypoints, however Jersey City has practically none, then Los Angeles is an more of a sprawl which lacks form or centers. When we explore a city, we use “definite sensory cues from the external environment” to remember our journey, so we can find our way back.

Nowadays, we use external electronic GPS systems to find our way rather than the GPS built into our brains. However, as we rely more on technology are our brains becoming increasingly flabby. If our hippocampus was only used to navigate this might be okay, however “place and memory are deeply connected.” Indeed, “Who we are is tangled up with where we are.” Our memories are linked through the physical environment we were in at the time.

House numbers were incorporated initially to help the government find people rather than to assist people to find each other. In Austria, Maria Theresa wanted to discover the eligible men for an army, and “ordered a conscription of souls - an accounting of all military eligible men in her territories.” However, she had no way of counting people and came up with the idea of house numbers, “by numbering each door and listing its occupants the military could strip away the house’s anonymity and discover the men of fighting age inside.”

In March 1770, “more than 1700 officers and civil servants fanned out across the empire, a professional painter entering a village would inscribe a number on each
wall with a thick paint made from oil and boiled bones. On pre-printed forms scribes recorded each man and his fitness to serve.”

Once governments had compelling reasons to find particular individuals, they decided that people must have an individual last name and a house number.

People felt very strongly about being labeled with a number. “Numbering is essentially dehumanizing.” Some rebelled by removing, covering or vandalizing their house number in their attempt to take back their humanity. They were referred to as “house number defilers.”

However, they maintained that “If they couldn’t number you, they couldn’t conscript you, they didn’t own you, you were truly a free man.”

The section on ‘class and status’ was interesting, and I learned all about the power of an address. “In 1997, Donald Trump threw a black-tie bash for his new building bordering Columbus Circle and Central Park West on the Upper Westside of Manhattan.”

Attendants at Trump’s party were less than impressed by his high-rise condominium. “It looks cheap.” “It’s Miami Beach.” “It’s really awful.” “Why didn’t you warn us?” angry New Yorkers asked Herbert Muschamp, The New York Times architectural critic. Muschamp himself called it a 1950s skyscraper in a 1980s gold lamé party dress.”

“The new building’s address wasn’t exactly a lie but it wasn’t the original one the city had issued, instead Trump’s development company had asked the city to change the building’s address from 15 Columbus Circle to One Central Park West.”

In America, William Penn an urban planner “named the cross streets after things that spontaneously grow in the country launching another fashion of tree names like cherry and chestnut streets,” which I thought was lovely.

I truly enjoyed the section on memory. For example, “Memory of the nation” refers to events reported in newspapers or first-hand testimony that we haven’t experienced personally but we acknowledge as part of our history. “Collective memory – a kind a shared store of memories that shape group identity.”

“Before the nineteenth century we didn’t need objects to remember the past, memory was ingrained in local cultures, habits and customs, but as the great changes of the twentieth century seemed to speed up history and as memory became more removed from every day experience we began to feel a powerful urge to hold memories not just in our minds but in specific things and places like monuments and street names.”

“Memorializing the past is just another way of wishing about the present. The trouble is that we don’t always share the same memories and not everyone has an equal opportunity to enshrine their group’s memory on the landscape.”

Facts I learned while reading:

“The dead letter office” is where addresses are decoded so the letters can be delivered.

In America each address has a zip code, “Zip stands for zoning improvement plan.” It might be something I knew already but forgot!

Quote:

“To name something is to assert power over it.”

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deirdre Mask is an American lawyer and writer; her 2020 nonfiction book The Address Book is a fascinating look at how street names and addresses are designed and used around the world. I found this book fascinating, with its biggest strength being in its multidisciplinary approach, weaving in aspects of history, sociology, technology, and even epidemiology.

Further reading: logistics
Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant
Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door-Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by Peter Goodman
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

My statistics:
Book 375 for 2025
Book 2301 cumulatively