Saving Ourselves from Big Car

Cars are killing people and making the planet uninhabitable. Crashes take the lives of more than a million people around the world each year. Air pollution linked to motor vehicles contributes to even more untimely deaths. Highways and unsafe streets have devastated cities, yet traffic congestion still swallows up countless hours. And carbon emissions from transportation are a key driver of climate change, which now threatens to make the world unlivable. Why do we still worship at the altar of the car? How can we find alternatives that are healthier for the planet and ourselves? This book exposes how “Big Car”—the complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench car dependence—has pursued profit at the expense of the common good. David Obst explores how Big Car gained almost immeasurable influence over our lives, weighing the benefits and the costs of reliance on private automobiles. He details how industry covered up the harms of lead additives, fought against seatbelts, and continues to fund climate-change denialism. Obst considers the future of mobility, surveying how cities—from Taipei to Tempe, Copenhagen to Chicago—are experimenting with forms of transportation that offer alternatives to the dominance of cars. Provocative and comprehensive, Saving Ourselves from Big Car is a powerful wake-up call for us to change how we use cars before it’s too late.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction 1. Lead Herring (Part One) 2. What Is “Big Car”? 3. How Big Car Took Over the World (Part One) 4. How Big Car Took Over the World (Part Two) 5. The Road 6. Car Dreams 7. Lead Herring (Part Two) 8. The Corvair 9. Big Car Nightmares 10. The Edsel 11. Our Continued Love Affair with Big Car 12. Road Safety 13. Lead Herring (Part Three) 14. The Future of Mobility Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography

About the Author :
David Obst is a former journalist, publisher, screenwriter, and film producer. He worked as a literary agent for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, among others. Obst is the author of Too Good to Be Forgotten: Changing America in the ’60s and ’70s (1998).

Review :
David Obst’s book reveals a hard truth: the dream of car ownership has blinded us to better options—options we've been systematically denied. David Obst reveals how Big Car captured economies, governments, and even our imaginations to reshape how we get around, the places we live, and our social and civic lives—and the often dire consequences for our health, our safety, our relationships, and our living planet. Obst illuminates the great sweep of this century-long story, and brings it to vivid life by introducing us to some of the characters who devised our current predicament and to the people crafting humane alternatives to Big Car. Obst's book describes one of the most significant causes of human illness and death while being touted as the best solution for living freely. His book has set fire to a fuse that should ignite readers' feelings of pure dread and fury about what ‘Big Car’ has done to us. The demise of our species may be hiding in plain sight. Obst writes clearly, conversationally, and passionately about his subject. Despite the uphill nature of the task, he remains reasonably optimistic that we can mitigate the damage caused by car culture.