Traffic Tom Vanderbilt Allen Lane 2008

[i]‘The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life – different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle...

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
by Eric Abrahamson and David H Freedman  Weidenfeld & Nicolson London 2006

Look at the front of women’s magazines or the TV schedules, and we quickly come across experts who’ll tell us how to declutter and bring order to our messy lives by buying boxes and gadgets, or paying them to teach us how to be neat. But what’s wrong with a bit of...