Paperbacks: Naked Airport, by Alastair Gordon

"This is unbelievably cool," marvelled Gordon's London cousin as, in 1964, he saw the gleaming terminals of JFK airport. How, within four decades, did a heaven of shiny modern travel turn into a hell of crowds, delay, paranoia and ritual humiliation?

Taxi-ing smoothly between architecture, planning and social history, Gordon explains how the soar-and-crash record of the airport as icon mirrors the rise and fall of technology-driven optimism. If the terminal enjoyed a postwar "golden moment", then its fall from grace "was swift and merciless". Now, the punishment of passengers amounts to "an exercise in obedience training". In halls full of fear and rage, "all vestiges of utopia have been lost".