The automobile and American life

Introduction: The Automobile, Its History and Influence, and Some Contradictions

1. Beginnings: From a Mechanical Curiosity to a Plaything for the Well-to-Do

European by Birth, American by Adoption

Technological Antecedents: The Bicycle

Compact Power: The Internal Combustion Engine

Choices Made: Competition from Steam Engines and Electric Motors

American Pioneers

Organization as Power

The Automobile for Better or Worse?

Music Galore

The Mechanical Arts and the Coming of the Machine Age

The Quest for Speed

2. The Inscrutable Henry Ford and the Rise of the Machine Age

From a Dearborn Farm to the World Stage

Frederick Winslow Taylor and "One Best Way"

The Genesis of Mass Production at Highland Park

The Flivver King

The Model T: What a Car!

Later Years: Hero or Anti-Hero?

Gone in Sixty Seconds: Joy-Riders and Criminals

3. The Rise of the Competition and the Consumer During the 1920s

Billy Durant and "Silent" Sloan

Kettering, Earl, and "Keeping the Customer Dissatisfied"

The City of the Future and Dynamic Dayton of the 1930s

The Last of the Big Three: The Chrysler Corporation

The Independents

Innovation at the Periphery: The Cracker Jacker, Rickenbacker

The Jordan and Advertising the Dream

4. From Out of the Mud to On the Open Road

Which Came First: Good Roads or the Automobile?

The Good Roads Movement

A Transcontinental Link: The Lincoln Highway

Federal Legislation and the Gas Tax

Two Lane Black Top, or Concrete If There Is Money

Auto Camping and "Gypsying" Across America

Fill'er Up

Road Food

Divided Highways, Parkways, and Expressways

5. Religion, Courtship, Sex, and Women Drivers

An Answer to Prayer or Something to Pray About?

Sex in the Back Seat

Those Women Drivers!

Cars as Homes

6. The Interwar Years: The Great Depression, Aerodynamics, and Cars of the Olympian Age

Olympian Automobiles of the 1930s

Streamlining and the Chrysler "Airflop"

Sitdown, the Coming of the United Auto Workers, and the Battle of the Overpass

The Poetic Response to the Automobile

Singing the Blues about Automobiles and Life

Filming on the Race Track and Soundstage

7. World War II and the Reconversion Economy: No Time for Sergeants or Aspiring Automobile Manufacturers

"Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Jeep..."

Wartime Labor: Sacrifices and Selfishness

Gas Rationing

The Black Market: "Chiseled Gas"

The Reconversion Economy and a Man"s Dream

8. The Golden Age of the Automobile: The 1950s in America

The Automobile and Civil Rights

Hot Rod

Sports Cars on American Tracks, and The Red Car

Some Critics Surface: Safety and the Environment

Dealers, Good and Bad

The UAW, the Big Three, and Pattern Bargaining

The Cars of the Golden Era

The 1958 Recession and European Competition

The Volkswagen Bug

Cars and Rock and Roll

Film: The Rebels

A Night at the Drive-In

On the Road

The Coming of the Interstates

Summing Up the Glorious 1950s

9. The Go-Go Years, 1959-1973

The Microbus, Cars, and the Hippies

The Cadillac and the Establishment

An Age of Ambivalence

Harry Crews and the "White Trash" in His Novel Car

Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed

Government Regulation: Safety and the Environment

From a Brief Affair with Economy Vehicles to the Emergence of the Muscle Car

California Dreaming

Oil Shock I

Japanese Automobiles Come in a Big Way to America

James Bond, Steve McQueen, and the Action Thriller

Mobile Lovemaking

Summing Up the Sixties

10. The Automobile World Upside Down, 1980s to the Present

Rivethead and the Quality Cat

The Automobile and Contemporary Art

Lessons Not Learned

Trucks, Sport Utility Vehicles, and Crossovers

The Car Hobby: Car Crazy

Cars and Crime: The Drive-By

NASCAR Nation

Saturn, Chrysler, and Germans in the New South

New Technologies

Automobiles, Women, Eros, and Film

Poetry, Women, and Passion

Where Does the Automobile in American Life Go from Here?

Epilogue: The Automobile and One American Life.