The automobile and American life

The automobile and American life / John A. Heitmann.

From the Publisher: This is the story of how the automobile changed the essence of life in America. Both a general history of the automobile and a broad-ranging analysis of its cultural effects, the text addresses such topics as cars' inception as a mechanical curiosity and later a plaything f...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Heitmann, John Alfred
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2009.
Subjects:
Automobile industry and trade > United States > History.
Automobile industry and trade > Social aspects > United States > History.
Table of Contents:
  • 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
  • Automobile for better or worse?
  • Music galore
  • Mechanical arts and the coming of the machine age
  • 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"
  • Genesis of mass production at Highland Park
  • Flivver King
  • 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"
  • City of the future and dynamic Dayton of the 1930s
  • Last of the Big Three : the Chrysler Corporation
  • Independents
  • Innovation at the periphery : the Cracker Jacker, Rickenbacker
  • Jordan and advertising the dream
  • 4. From out of the mud to on the open road
  • Which came first : good roads or the automobile?
  • Good roads movement
  • 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
  • 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
  • Black Market : "chiseled gas"
  • Reconversion economy and a man's dream
  • 8. The golden age of the automobile : the 1950s in America
  • 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
  • UAW, the Big Three, and pattern bargaining
  • Cars of the golden era
  • 1958 recession and European competition
  • Volkswagen Bug
  • Cars and rock and roll
  • Film : the rebels
  • Night at the drive-in
  • On the road
  • Coming of the interstates
  • Summing up the glorious 1950s
  • 9. The go-go years, 1959-1973
  • Microbus, cars, and the hippies
  • Cadillac and the establishment
  • 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
  • Automobile and contemporary art
  • Lessons not learned
  • Trucks, sport utility vehicles, and crossovers
  • 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.

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