Laura Bush, her fatal accident, a Corvair and an Impala -- her story from "Spoken from the Heart"

Hi folks -- thanks to former colleague Ed Garten for the idea. I have always like Laura Bush. She seems practical, kind, and open, and not the shrewish kind of woman so often married to politicians. But then George W. was not that much of a calculating, overly ambitious politican.



In the near future, Laura is coming out with her book, and in it she discusses what had to be one of the most difficult times in her life as an adolescent -- the involvement in an accident that was her fault that killed a fellow high school classmate. Yes, it is important to note that it doubtful that design flaw in the Corvair had anything at all to do with this accident. We try to blame technology, perhaps in an effort to soothe our souls, but in fact I doubt that the Corvair's sway bar design had anything to do with what transpired. To be sure, virtually any car of the early 1960s was far from what we would deem safe by today's standards -- seat belts, ABS, crumple zones, etc. We know that Laura was thrown from her car, but I do not know whether or not that car was equipped with seat belts. Let's face it, young drivers get it trouble, and that is what happened with Laura, as she was distracted by her conversation with a passenger.



The bigger point here is not to point fingers at either the Corvair or Laura, but to understand that as much as there are people who have a love affair with cars, there is also a flip side, one in which the car can be seen as hell on wheels, to use the title from David Blanke's recent book on auto accidents and American culture. Accidents, especially the horrific kind, leave us numb and hurt inside, and with memories that are carried with us forever. And this is the case of Laura Bush, whose few fleeting minutes in 1965 are etched in her mind to this day. Obviously, Laura came out of this with a sensitivity for others, as is exemplified in her open heart.



See account from her book:

“In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth,” she says. “The whole time,” she adds later, “I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,’ over and over and over again.”

“It was sporty and sleek, and it was also the car that Ralph Nader made famous in his book Unsafe at Any Speed,” she states. “He claimed the car was unstable and prone to rollover accidents. A few years later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration went so far as to investigate the Corvair’s handling, but it didn’t reach the same grim conclusions. I was driving my dad’s much larger and heavier Chevy Impala. But none of that would ever ease the night of November 6. Not for me, and never for the Douglases.”

A Select Bibliography of the History of Automobile in America, Books: F-M

Farber, David R. Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Faris, John T. Roaming American Highways. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.

Felsen, Henry Gregor. Hot Rod. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1950.

Finkelstein, Norman H. The Way Things Never Were: The Truth About the “Good Old Days” New York: Atheneum, 1999.

Flink, James J. America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970.

------. The Automobile Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.

Ford, Henry. My Life and Work. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922.

------. Today and Tomorrow. Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press, 1988.

Foster, Kit. The Stanley Steamer: America’s Legendary Steam Car. Kingfield, ME: Stanley Museum, 2004.

French, Michael J. The United States Tire Industry. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

Frey, John W. ed. A History of the Petroleum Administration for War, 1941-1945. Washington D.C.:G.P.O., 1946.

Gartman, David. Auto Opium: A Social History of American Automobile Design. London: Routledge, 1994.

------. Auto Slavery: The Labor Process in the American Automobile Industry, 1897-1950. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

Georgano, Nick. Art of the American Automobile: The Greatest Stylists and Their Work. New York: Smithmark, 1995.

Gladding, Effie Price. Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway. New York: Brentano’s, 1915.

Goddard, Stephen B. Colonel Albert Pope and His American Dream Machines: The Life and Times of a Bicycle Tycoon Turned Automotive Pioneer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000.

Granatelli, Anthony (Andy). They Call Me Mister 500. Chicago: Henry Regency, 1969.

Greenleaf, William. Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Patent Suit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961.

Gruskin, Paul. Rock’n Down the Highway: The Cars that Made Rock Roll. St. Paul, MN: Voyageur Press, 2006.

Gustin, Lawrence R. Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973.

Gutfreud, Owen D. Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Hagstrom, Robert G. The NASCAR Way: The Business that Drives the Sport. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

Hair, William Ivy. The Kingfish and his Realm. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.

Halberstam, David. The Reckoning. New York: William Morrow, 1986.

Hamper, Ben. Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line. New York: Warner Books, 1992.

Heat Moon, William Least. Blue Highways: A Journey into America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.

Hendry, Maurice D. Cadillac, Standard of the World: The Complete History. Princeton, NJ: Automobile Quarterly Publications, 1977.

Herlihy, David V. Bicycle: The History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

Hokanson, Drake. The Lincoln Highway: Main Street Across America. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988.

Hounshell, David A. From The American System to Mass Production 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1984.

Hyde, Charles K. The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.

Hyde, Charles K. Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.

Iacocca, Lee, with William Novak. Iacocca: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.

Ikuta, Yasutoshi. American Automobile: Advertising from the Antique and Classic Eras. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988.

------. Cruise-o-matic: Automobile Advertising of the 1950s. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988.

Ingrassia, Paul. Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Innes, C. D. Designing Modern America: Broadway to Main Street. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Jackson, Robert B. Road Race Round the World: New York to Paris, 1908. New York: Scholastic, 1965.

Jacobs, Timothy. A History of General Motors. New York: Smithmark, 1992.

------. Lemons: The Worlds Worst Cars. Greenwich, CT: Dorsey, 1991.

James, Wanda. Driving From Japan: Japanese Cars in America. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.

Jardim, Anne. The First Henry Ford: A Study in Personality and Leadership. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970.

Jeffreys, Steven. Management and the Managed. London: Cambridge Press, 1986.

Jerome, John. The Death of the Automobile: The Fatal Effect of the Golden Era, 1955-1970. New York: Norton, 1972.

Kanigel, Robert. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. New York: Viking, 1997.

Kaszynski, William. Route 66: Images of America’s Main Street. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003.

Keats, John. The Insolent Chariots. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1959.

Keene, Carolyn. The Secret of the Old Clock. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930.

Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Viking, 2007.

Keyser, Michael. French Kiss With Death: Steve McQueen and the Making of Lemans: The man—the Race—the Cars—the Movie. Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, 1999.

Kinsey, Alfred, et al. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1953.

Kirby, Richard Shelton. Engineering in History. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956.

Kirsch, David. The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000).

Koistinen, Paul A. C. Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940-1945. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1994.

Kraus, Henry. Heroes of Unwritten Story: The UAW 1934-1939. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Laban, Brian. Cars: The Early Years. Köln: Könemann, 2000.

Lacey, Robert. Ford, the Men and the Machine. New York: Little, Brown, 1986.

Lackey, James H. The Jordan Automobile: A History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.

Landis, Carole. Four Jills in a Jeep. New York: Random House, 1944.

Langworth, Richard M., and Jan P. Norbye. The Complete History of Chrysler Corporation, 1924-1985. New York: Beekman House, 1985.

Lane, Rose Wilder. Travels with Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983.

Langworth, Richard M., and Jan P. Norbye. The Complete History of General Motors, 1908‑1986. Skokie, IL: Publications International, 1986.

Laux, James. In First Gear: The French Automobile Industry. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976.

Lavine, Sigmund A. Kettering: Master Inventor. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1960.

Lears, T. J. Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Leavitt, Helen. Superhighway—Superhoax. New York: Ballantine, 1970.

Le Grand, Henderson. Augustus Drives a Jeep. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946.

Leland, Ottilie M., with Minnie Dubbs Millbrook. Master of Precision: Henry M. Leland. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.

Leslie, Stewart W. Boss Kettering. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Lesseig, Corey T. Automobility: Social Changes in the American South 1909-1939. New York and London: Routledge, 2001.

Levine, Leo. Ford: The Dust and the Glory: A Racing History. 2 vols. Warrendale, PA: SAE, 2001.

Levy, Lester S. Give Me Yesterday: American History in Song, 1890-1920. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.

Lewis, David Lanier. The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.

Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life. New York: Viking, 1997.

Lewis, W. David. Eddie Rickenbacker: An American Hero in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

Lincoln, Natalie Sumner. The Blue Car Mystery. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1926.

Lincoln Highway Association. A Picture of Progress on the Lincoln Way. Detroit, 1920.

Livesay, Harold. American Made. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977.

Ludwigsen, Karl. Battle for the Beetle. Cambridge, MA: Bentley, 2000.

Lutz, Robert A. Guts: The Seven Laws of Business that Made Chrysler the World’s Hottest Car Company. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

Lynd, Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd. Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937.

Lyons, Dan. Cars of the Fantastic ‘50s. Iola, WI: KP Books, 2005.

Maugeri, Leonardo. The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and the Future of the World’s Most Controversial Resource. Westport, CT: Prager, 2006.

Madsen, Axel. The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors. New York: Wiley, 1999.

Mantle, Jonathan. Car Wars: Fifty Years of Greed, Treachery, and Skulduggery in the Global Marketplace. New York: Arcade, 1995.

March, Peter and Peter Collett. Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car. Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1987.

Marling, Karal Ann. As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Marquis, Samuel S. Henry Ford: An Interpretation. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1923.

Massey, Beatirice Larned. It Might Have Been Worse: A Motor Trip from Coast to Coast. San Francisco: Harr Wagner, 1920.

Maxim, Hiram Percy. Horseless Carriage Days. New York: Dover, 1962.

May, George W. Charles E. Duryea Automaker. Chillicothe, IL: River Beach Publishing, 1996.

McCahill, Tom. The Modern Sports Car. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954.

McCallum, Iain. Blood Brothers: Hiram and Hudson Maxim; Pioneers of Modern Warfare. London: Chatham, 1999.

McCalley, Bruce W. Model T Ford: The Car that Changed the World. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1994.

McKeon, Elizabeth and Linda Everett. Cinema Under the Stars: America’s Love Affair with the Drive-In Movie Theater. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 1998.

McNichol, Dan. The Roads that Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System. New York: Sterling, 2006.

McShane, Clay. Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Madden, W. C. Haynes-Apperson and America’s First Practical Automobile: A History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003.

Marcantonio, Alfred, David Abbot, and John O’Driscoll. Is the Bug Dead? The Great Beetle Ad Campaign. New York: Stewart, 1983.

Medley, Tom. Tex Smith’s Hot Rod History. Osceloa, WI: Motorbooks International, 1990.

Meier, August. Black Detroit. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Miller, Ray. Chevrolet: The Coming of Age, 1911-1942. Oceanside, CA: Evergreen Press, 1976.

Mills, Katie. The Road Story and the Rebel: Moving through Film, Fiction and Television. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006.

Mom, Gijs. The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

Monkkonen, Eric H. America Becomes Urban: the Development of U.S. Cities and Towns 1780-1980. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988.

Moorehouse, H. F. Driving Ambitions: An Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991.

Morales, Rebecca. Flexible Production: Restructuring the International Automobile Industry. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1994.

Moses, Sam. Fast Guys, Rich Guys and Idiots: A Racing Odyssey on the Border of Obsession. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Mueller, Mike. The American Pickup Truck. Osceola, WI: MBI, 1999.

Muir, John and Tosh Gregg. How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. Santa Fe, NM: John Muir Publications, 16th ed., 1995.

A Brief Review of Jason Vuic's The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History

hi folks -- Jason Vuic and Hill and Wang publishers were thoughtful enough to send me a copy of Jason's The Yugo this week, and I quickly devoured it despite the fact that I had papers to grade. Our knowledge of the history of the automobile in general post 1960 is rather meager, and this work greatly adds to a very slim amount of good history on this period and subject. the post 1960 era is clearly a weakness that I perceive is in my book The Automobile and American Life, although my work does a better job than most surveys regarding the recent past, especially culturally.

What I found most interesting in this book was how Vuic set the broad historical context for a study that is primarily about a car. He does an excellent job in placing this story in Eastern Europe -- with accompanying tales concerning both America and Italy as need be -- into the narrative. Until I read the book, I really knew nothing about Malcolm Bricklin and his various schemes associated with the auto industry that led up to the importation of the Yugo into the United States by the mid-1980s. Bricklin was a car guy, entrepreneur, projector, snake oil salesman, and fraud all rolled into one. But he was also a visionary and idealist, who was one of a number of automobile industry outliers who attempted to break into a U.S. market that was dominant ed by the Big Three and a handful of foreign manufacturers after 1970. Bricklin seemingly never quite got it that "the devil is in the details," and that positive thinking can take you only so far.

The Yugo is at times remarkably funny, and I appreciated the humor, although it was at the expense of those sorry consumers who took a chance at a car that was clearly not adequate for the American market and consumer preferences and expectations. But at times, the narrative devolved into a discourse hat you might expect more in an "Introduction the Modern Europe" undergraduate history class, and I found it important to understand this background material.

My criticisms are few. I really wanted for the author to get behind the wheel of one of the surviving cars, and take it for a spin! And that never happened. People in East Germany love the Trabant, but I did not sense that the same emotions are true fore Yugo. Why? And finally, I never had a sense after finishing the book that the question of "was this car the worst ever" not answered to my satisfaction.

What I want to do now is talk to a Yugo owner and drive a Yugo, so that I can make up my mind beyond knowledge gained from a book. Cross country in a Yugo through the desert this summer? I doubt I am that bold!

Hyundai Eon

Hyundai Eon

Hyundai Eon

Eon is the smallest car ever made by Hyundai. It's a compact car with 772 kg weight, it measures 3.49 m long, 1.50 m high and 1.55 wide.

Inside, the car can be equipped with air conditioning, power steering, electric windows and mirrors, Bluetooth connectivity, height adjustable steering wheel, fog lights and airbag for the driver, items such as ABS brakes and stability control will not be part of the Hyundai Eon.
The small car will have an engine with 56 hp and 800 cm3, is notable for low fuel consumption, 1 liter of gasoline every 21km.

Hyundai Eon interior

A Select Bibliography of BOOKS on the history of the automobile in America, A-E

Hi folks -- it seems that a number of viewers thought that my listing of articles was valuable, so I am following up with a list of books, with this installment spanning authors A-E. Comments and your personal responses, including suggestions for additions, are always appreciated!

John

Books
Adler, Dennis. Chrysler. Osceola, WI: MBI, 2000.
------. Duesenberg. N.P: Krause Publications, 2004.
Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday. New York: Harper and Row, 1931.
Antonick, Michael. California Screamin’: The Glory Days of Corvette Road Racing. Osceola, WI: MBI, 1990.
Arnold, Horace Lucien, and Fay Leone Faurote. Ford Methods and Ford Shops. New York: The Engineering Magazine Company, 1915.
Assael, Shaun. Wide Open: Days and Nights on the NASCAR Tour. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.
Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New York: Public Affairs, 2001.
Barnard, John. American Vanguard: The United Autoworkers during the Reuther Years, 1935-1970. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.
Barnes, H.E. Society in Transition. New York: Prentice Hall, 1939.
Batchelor, Dean. Dry Lakes and Drag Strips: The American Hot Rod. St. Paul, MN: MBI, 2002.
Batchelor, Ray. Henry Ford: Mass Production, Modernism and Design. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Bayley, Stephen. Harley Earl and the Dream Machine. New York: Knopf, 1983.
------. Sex, Drink and Fast Cars. New York: Pantheon, 1986.
Beasley, David. The Suppression of the Automobile: Skullduggery at the Crossroads New York and Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Beatley, Timothy. Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000.
Belasco, Warren James. Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
Bel Geddes, Norman. Magic Motorways. New York: Random House, 1940.
Belloc, Hilaire. The Road. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1925.
Berger, Michael L. The Devil Wagon in God’s Country: The Automobile and Social Change in Rural America, 1893-1929. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979.
Bernstein, Arnold. A History of The American Worker: The Turbulent Years 1933-1941. Los Angeles: University of California, 1969.
Billington, David P., and David P. Billington, Jr. Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Binder, Alan K., and Deebe Ferris, eds. General Motors in the 20th Century. Southfield, MI: Wards Communications, 2000.
Blackford, Mansel G., and K. Austin Kerr. B. F. Goodrich: Tradition and Transformation, 1870-1995. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.
Blank, Harrod. Wild Wheels. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1993.
Bliss, Carey S. Autos Across America: A Bibliography of Transcontinental Automobile Travel: 1903-1940. Austin and New Haven: Jenkins & Reese, 1982.
Blum, John Morton. V Was For Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II. New York: First Harvest, 1976.
Borg, Kevin L. Automechanics: Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Borgeson, Griffith. Miller. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks, 1993.
Bonsall, Thomas E. The Cadillac Story: The Postwar Years. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
Bottles, Scott. Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of a Modern City. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.
Boyer, Paul S. By Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon, 1985.
Bradsher, Keith. High and Mighty: SUVs – the World’s most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got that Way. New York: Public Affairs, 2002.
Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: the Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.
Breer, Carl. The Birth of Chrysler Corporation and its Engineering Legacy. Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers, 1995.
Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903-2003. New York: Viking, 2003.
Brown, Kurt, ed. Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed, 1994.
Brown, Lester R., Christopher Flavin, and Colin Norman. Running on Empty: The Future of the Automobile in an Oil-Short World. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.
Buehrig, Gordon M. Auburn. The Year 1936 is Viewed 50 Years Later. N.P.: n.p., 1986.
Buel, Ronald. Dead End: the Automobile in Mass Transportation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Burlingame, Roger. Henry Ford. New York: Knopf, 1955.
Burnside, Tom, and Denise McCluggage. American Racing: Road Racing in the 50s and 60s. Cologne: Kőnemann, 1996.
Burton, Walter. The Story of Tire Beads and Tires. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954.
Butler, Don. Auburn Cord Duesenberg. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks, 1992.
Carson, Iain, and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran. Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future. New York: Twelve, 2007.
Casey, Robert. The Model T: A Centennial History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Chandler, Alfred D. Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of Industrial Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962.
Chrysler Corporation. The Story of an American Company. Detroit, MI: Chrysler, 1955.
Clymer, Floyd. Floyd Clymer’s Steam Car Scrapbook. New York: Bonanza Books, 1945.
------. Henry’s Wonderful Model T 1908-1927. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.
------. Those Wonderful Old Automobiles. New York: Bonanza, 1953.
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Cray, Ed. Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.
Crews, Harry. Car. New York: William Morrow, 1972.
Critchlow, Donald T. Studebaker: The Life and Death of an American Corporation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Crosse, Jesse. The Greatest Movie Car Chases of all Time. St. Paul, MN: Motorbooks, 2006.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Eurgen Rochenberg-Halton. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Curico, Vincent. Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Cusumano, Michael A. The Japanese Automobile Industry: Technology and Management at Nissan and Toyota. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Dammann, George H. Seventy Years of Chrysler. Glen Ellyn, IL: Crestline, 1974.
Davis, Michael W. R. Detroit’s Wartime Industry, Arsenal of Democracy. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007.
Davis, Mike. Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb. London: Verso, 2007.
Davis, Susan S. The Stanleys: Renaissance Yankees: Innovation in Industry and the Arts. New York: Newcomen Society of the United States, 1997.
Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.
Dettelbach, Cynthia Golob. In the Driver’s Seat: The Automobile in American Literature and Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.
Donaldson, Gary. Abundance and Anxiety: America, 1945-1960. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
Donnelly, Nora, ed. Customized: Art Inspired by Hot Rods, Low Riders and American Car Culture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000.
Downey, Fairfax. Jezebel the Jeep. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1944.
Duncan, Dayton. Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Duryea, J. Frank. America’s First Automobile. Springfield, MA: Macaulay, 1942.
Eastman, Joel W. Styling vs. Safety: The American Automobile Industry and the Development of Automotive Safety, 1900–1966. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
Elbert, J. L. Duesenberg: the Mightiest American Motor Car. Arcadia,CA: Post-Era Books, 1975.

A Select Bibliography of Articles on the History of the Automobile in America

Hi folks -- as I am starting on a bibliography of automobile racing in America to 1941, I thought I would share a more general bibliography to those interested in the history of the automobile. Note that this is a select and not a comprehensive bibliography, yet still should be helpful to those interested in the field.
Select Bibliography
Journal Articles
Alkalay-Gut, Karen. “Sex and the Single Engine: E. E. Cummings’ Experiment in Metaphoric Equation.” Journal of Modern Literature 20 (Winter 1996): 254-8.
Ames, Roy Clifton. “Cars in Song.” Special-Interest Autos (January-February 1977): 40-45.
Andrews, Robert F. “On Designing the ‘Step-down’ Hudson.” Automobile Quarterly 9 (Summer 1971): 393-7.
Ariout, Jacqueline Fellague. “The Dearborn Independent, A Mirror of the 1920s.” Michigan History Magazine 80 (1996): 41-7.
Arnold, Robert F. “Termination or Transformation? The ‘Terminator’ Films and Recent Changes in the U.S. Auto Industry.” Film Quarterly 52 (Autumn 1998): 20-30.
Aronson, Sidney H. “The Sociology of the Bicycle.” Social Forces. 30 (March 1952): 305-12.
Artz, Nancy, Jeanne Munger, and Warren Purdy. “Gender Issues in Advertising Language.” Women and Language 22 (Fall 1999): 20-6.
Behling, Laura L. “ ‘The Woman at the Wheel:’ Marketing Ideal Womanhood, 1915-1934.” Journal of American Culture 20 (Fall 1997): 13-31.
Bernstein, Barton J. “The Automobile Industry and the Coming of World War II.” The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly. 47 (1966): 22-33.
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee. “DuPont and the Color Revolution.” Chemical Heritage. (Fall 2007): 20-5.
Burnham, John C. “The Gasoline Tax and the Automobile Revolution.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 48 (December 1961): 435-59.
Busby, Linda J., and Greg Leichty. “Feminism and Advertising in Traditional and Non-Traditional Women’s Magazines.” Journalism Quarterly. 70 (Summer 1993): 247-64.
Carr, Lowell Julliard. “How the Devil –Wagon Came to Dexter: A Study of Diffusional Change in an American Community.” Social Forces. 11 (October 1932): 64-70.
Casey, Robert. “The Vanderbilt Cup, 1908.” Technology and Culture 40 (1999): 358-62.
Chesterton, G. K. “The Hollow Horn.” G. K.’s Weekly. 24 (October 1, 1936): 57.
Clarke, Sally. “Managing Design: the Art and Colour Section at General Motors, 1927-1941.” Journal of Design History 12 (1999): 65-79.
Cooper, Gail. “Frederick Winslow Taylor and Scientific Management.” In Technology in America, edited by Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., 163-176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cubitt, Sean. “ ‘Maybellene’: Meaning and Listening Subject.” Popular Music. 4 (1984): 207‑24.
Edmondson, Amy. “Who Was Buckminster Fuller Anyway?” American History of Invention & Technology 3 (1988): 18-25.
Edsforth, Ronald, and Robert Asher. “The Speedup: The Focal Point of Worker’s Grievances, 1919-1941.” In Autowork, edited by Robert Asher and Ronald Edsforth, 65-98. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Fine, Sidney. “The Origins of the United Automobile Workers, 1933-1935.” The Journal of Economic History 18 (September 1958): 249-82.
Flink, James J. “The Olympian Age of the Automobile.” American Heritage of Invention & Technology. 7 (Winter 1992): 54-63.
------. “The Path of Least Resistance.” American Heritage of Invention & Technology. 5 (Fall 1989): 34-44.
------. “Three Stages of American Automobile Consciousness.” American Quarterly. 24 (October 1972): 451-73.
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