Per the publisher, "Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel.
Schivelbusch notes that the “annihilation of space and time” was the early nineteenth-century characterization of the effect of railroad travel, due to the speed the new means of transportation was able to achieve.
The speed of the train precluded the ability to focus on aspects of the landscape around them for any great length of time, and many early passengers often became physically distressed or even ill as a result of their exposure to the rapid change of impressions while looking out the railcar window.
[9] The modes of perception formed by traditional travel were thus thrown into crisis by the need for an entirely new perceptual posture, one that could enable enjoyment or at least tolerance of the new landscape created by the railroad.
Such a shift in perception had subtle ramifications in many sectors: for instance, book publishers enjoyed an increased demand for reading material by train travelers, as something they could easily and at length give their attention to and focus their eyes on.