Auto Mania / Robert M. Cover.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cover, Robert M., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Automobile industry and trade--United States--History--20th century.

Automobile industry and trade.

Automobiles--Environmental aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Automobiles.

Consumer behavior--United States--History--20th century.

Consumer behavior.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2007]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The twentieth-century American experience with the automobile has much to tell us about the relationship between consumer capitalism and the environment, Tom McCarthy contends. In Auto Mania he presents the first environmental history of the automobile that shows how consumer desire (and manufacturer decisions) created impacts across the product lifecycle-from raw material extraction to manufacturing to consumer use to disposal. From the provocative public antics of young millionaires who owned the first cars early in the twentieth century to the SUV craze of the 1990s, Auto Mania explores developments that touched the environment. Along the way McCarthy examines how Henry Ford's fetish for waste reduction tempered the environmental impacts of Model T mass production; how Elvis Presley's widely shared postwar desire for Cadillacs made matters worse; how the 1970s energy crisis hurt small cars; and why baby boomers ignored worries about global warming. McCarthy shows that problems were recognized early. The difficulty was addressing them, a matter less of doing scientific research and educating the public than implementing solutions through America's market economy and democratic government. Consumer and producer interests have rarely aligned in helpful ways, and automakers and consumers have made powerful opponents of regulation. The result has been a mixed record of environmental reform with troubling prospects for the future.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Arrogance of Wealth

2. Foresight and Emotion

3. A Monstrously Big Thing

4. An Industrial Epic

5. The Death and Afterlife of Automobiles

6. Cadillacs and Community

7. Disenchanted with Detroit

8. If We Can Put a Man on the Moon . . .

9. The One Who Got It

10. Out of My Dead Hands

11. Small Was Beautiful

12. The Riddle of the Sport Utility Vehicle

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-332) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300150025

0300150024

OCLC:

1024040574