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Acknowledgments | |
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Introduction: The Automobile, Its History and Influence, and Some Contradictions | |
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Beginnings: From a Mechanical Curiosity to a Plaything for the Well-to-Do | |
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European by Birth, American by Adoption | |
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Technological Antecedents: The Bicycle | |
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Compact Power: The Internal Combustion Engine | |
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Choices Made: Competition from Steam Engines and Electric Motors | |
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American Pioneers | |
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Organization as Power | |
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The Automobile for Better or Worse? | |
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Music Galore | |
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The Mechanical Arts and the Coming of the Machine Age | |
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The Quest for Speed | |
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The Inscrutable Henry Ford and the Rise of the Machine Age | |
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From a Dearborn Farm to the World Stage | |
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Frederick Winslow Taylor and "One Best Way" | |
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The Genesis of Mass Production at Highland Park | |
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The Flivver King | |
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The Model T: What a Car! | |
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Later Years: Hero or Anti-Hero? | |
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Gone in Sixty Seconds: Joy-Riders and Criminals | |
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The Rise of the Competition and the Consumer During the 1920s | |
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Billy Durant and "Silent" Sloan | |
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Kettering, Earl, and "Keeping the Customer Dissatisfied" | |
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The City of the Future and Dynamic Dayton of the 1930s | |
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The Last of the Big Three: The Chrysler Corporation | |
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The Independents | |
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Innovation at the Periphery: The Cracker Jacker, Rickenbacker | |
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The Jordan and Advertising the Dream | |
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From Out of the Mud to On the Open Road | |
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Which Came First: Good Roads or the Automobile? | |
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The Good Roads Movement | |
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A Transcontinental Link: The Lincoln Highway | |
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Federal Legislation and the Gas Tax | |
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Two Lane Black Top, or Concrete If There Is Money | |
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Auto Camping and "Gypsying" Across America | |
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Fill 'er Up | |
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Road Food | |
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Divided Highways, Parkways, and Expressways | |
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Religion, Courtship, Sex, and Women Drivers | |
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An Answer to Prayer or Something to Pray About? | |
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Sex in the Back Seat | |
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Those Women Drivers! | |
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Cars as Homes | |
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The Interwar Years: The Great Depression, Aerodynamics, and Cars of the Olympian Age | |
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Olympian Automobiles of the 1930s | |
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Streamlining and the Chrysler "Airflop" | |
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Sitdown, the Coming of the United Auto Workers, and the Battle of the Overpass | |
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The Poetic Response to the Automobile | |
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Singing the Blues about Automobiles and Life | |
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Filming on the Race Track and Soundstage | |
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World War II and the Reconversion Economy: No Time for Sergeants or Aspiring Automobile Manufacturers | |
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"Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Jeep. . ." | |
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Wartime Labor: Sacrifices and Selfishness | |
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Gas Rationing | |
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The Black Market: "Chiseled Gas" | |
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The Reconversion Economy and a Man's Dream | |
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The Golden Age of the Automobile: The 1950s in America | |
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The Automobile and Civil Rights | |
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Hot Rod | |
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Sports Cars on American Tracks, and The Red Car | |
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Some Critics Surface: Safety and the Environment | |
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Dealers, Good and Bad | |
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The UAW, the Big Three, and Pattern Bargaining | |
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The Cars of the Golden Era | |
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The 1958 Recession and European Competition | |
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The Volkswagen Bug | |
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Cars and Rock and Roll | |
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Film: The Rebels | |
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A Night at the Drive-In | |
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On the Road | |
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The Coming of the Interstates | |
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Summing Up the Glorious 1950s | |
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The Go-Go Years, 1959-1973 | |
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The Microbus, Cars, and the Hippies | |
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The Cadillac and the Establishment | |
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An Age of Ambivalence | |
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Harry Crews and the "White Trash" in His Novel Car | |
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Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed | |
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Government Regulation: Safety and the Environment | |
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From a Brief Affair with Economy Vehicles to the Emergence of the Muscle Car | |
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California Dreaming | |
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Oil Shock I | |
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Japanese Automobiles Come in a Big Way to America | |
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James Bond, Steve McQueen, and the Action Thriller | |
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Mobile Lovemaking | |
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Summing Up the Sixties | |
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The Automobile World Upside Down, 1980s to the Present | |
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Rivethead and the Quality Cat | |
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The Automobile and Contemporary Art | |
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Lessons Not Learned | |
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Trucks, Sport Utility Vehicles, and Crossovers | |
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The Car Hobby: Car Crazy | |
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Cars and Crime: The Drive-By | |
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NASCAR Nation | |
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Saturn, Chrysler, and Germans in the New South | |
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New Technologies | |
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Automobiles, Women, Eros, and Film | |
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Poetry, Women, and Passion | |
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Where Does the Automobile in American Life Go from Here? | |
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Epilogue: The Automobile and One American Life | |
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Chapter Notes | |
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Select Bibliography | |
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Index | |