A magisterial history of the car that surveys the shape of its future. Former financial news editor and deputy arts editor at the Times of London, Appleyard is a bona fide automobile enthusiast, but in this well-balanced study, he also assays the ills that car culture has wrought. This book is not just a history of the automobile; it is also a vibrant portrait of an age, a stimulating work of scholarship, and a top-notch example of nonfiction storytelling. The combination of the author's propulsive writing style and journalistic thoroughness makes for compelling reading, particularly the technological, cultural, and aesthetic critiques he brings to bear. Appleyard evaluates the contributions of every significant figure in the evolution of the car, from its beginnings in France and England to today's promising electric and autonomous vehicle technologies, along with analyses of the ecological and societal costs this new era portends. Because the U.S. dominated the industry for much of its history, two men receive in-depth, and highly revealing, character studies: "Henry Ford was one of the two inventors of the core features of twentieth-century modernity. He invented and refined mass production and thereby created a mass market of consumers; Alfred Sloan at General Motors invented and refined the techniques of marketing to the masses. In their hands cars remade the world." It is hard to imagine a more complete study of the automobile, albeit with an ominous coda. Appleyard warns that an "autonomous" future for the car, for all its benefits, will be the death knell of the joys of driving--and perhaps more. If we make the wrong choices, certain freedoms could be lost. "The autonomous cars will not in fact be autonomous--they will be driven by the cloud…they will cast off the capricious exigencies of human control and surrender to the demands of government or corporate clouds." Readers may never look at their cars in quite the same way again. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Appleyard, a veteran British journalist and author (The Brain Is Wider than the Sky), takes a broad perspective on the automobile. Soon, people can expect cars, as they know them, to be replaced by autonomous electric pods, summoned and dismissed via the cloud. The author first sketches the history of the bicycle, which he credits with planting the idea of free, individual moment along open roads. The self-propelled carriage was invented in the 1880s as a cleaner replacement for polluting, horse-drawn vehicles. He profiles the main historical figures that developed auto corporations around the world, also noting the evolution of the car from transport device to styled object of consumer desire. Public culture includes hot rodding, customizing, films, television series, computer games, supercars, and cars of celebrities. Yet proliferation of the car and truck has enabled freeways, suburban sprawl, drive-in commerce, smog, and millions of traffic casualties. VERDICT That everyday engineering wonder, the petroleum-powered vehicle, has been around for 130 years. Appleyard narrates its transformative story while acknowledging that its era is fading.--David R. Conn