Acknowledgments -- Introduction : The great experiment -- 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
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 life cycle - 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 Maniaexplores 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."-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-332) and index
