Contents
I. The First Decade
Why Michigan? by John B. Rae 1
My Seven Years of Automotive Servitude by Charles Madison 10
The Automobile and the City by Mark S. Foster 24
The Early Automobile and the American Farmer by Reynold M. Wilk 37
The Automobile and American Fashion, 1900-1930 by Helen Frye 48
The Great White Hope on Wheels by Michael L. Berger 59
Images of the Early Car 71
Vanishing Americana by William S. Doxey 79
II. The Transformation of America
The Road to Autopia: The Automobile and the Spatial Transformation of American Culture by Joseph Interrante 89
Commercialized Nostalgia: The Origins of the Roadside Strip by Warren Belasco 105
Sex and the Automobile: From Rumble Seats to Rockin' Vans by David L. Lewis 123
Something of Love by Robley Wilson, Jr. 134
"Woman's Place" in American Car Culture by Charles L. Sanford 137
Not from the Back Seat by Lydia Simmons 153
Moving Backward by Robert M. Lienert 159
The Automobile and the Transformation of the American House, 1910-1935 by Folke T. Kihlstedt 160
The True Mall by John Hildebidle 176
III. The Mirror of Art
A Runaway Match: The Automobile in the American Film, 1900-1920 by Julian Smith 179
Cars and Films in American Culture, 1929-1959 by Kenneth Hey 193
The Image of the Automobile in American Art by Gerald D. Silk 206
Joyce Carol Oates 22
The Automobile and American Poetry by Laurence Goldstein 224
Versions of Eden: The Automobile and the American Novel by David Laird 244
CB: An Inquiry into a Novel State of Communication by Jon T. Powell 257
Motivatin' with Chuck Berry and Frederick Jackson Turner by Warren Belasco 262
IV. Dream Machines or American Nightmare?
Bel Air: The Automobile as Art Object by Daniel L. Guillory 280
As Animals by Kathleen Spivack 290
Love at Second Sight by William E. Giles 292
Sweet Chariot by Steven Dimeo 295
The Heydey of the Car Culture 307
Cruising with Donny on the San Leandro Strip by Fred Setterberg 315
Rock and Roll by Sibyl James 324
GM Tech Center by John R. Reed 326
Crashworthiness as a Cultural Ideal by Paul W. Gikas 327
Death of a Commuter by Michael Beres 340
Our Off-Road Fantasy by Peter Steinhart 346
V. The Future
Our Romance with the Auto Is Over by Michael Barone 353
The Automobile Industry's Future Role in the Domestic and World Economy by David E. Cole and Lawrence T. Harbeck 356
The Obsolescent Auto by Catherine Marshall 371
Energy, Automobiles, and the Quality of Life by Stephen W. White 375
Notes from the Plague Planet by Sam Abrams 379
Filling Station by Edward Mortin 382
Star Wars Style and American Automobiles by Daniel L. Guillory 383
VI. Historiography
Some Milestones of Automotive Literature by Robert C. Ackerson 394
The Car Culture revisited: Some Comments on the Recent Historiography of Automotive History by James J. Flink 405
Contributors 419
