Are We There Yet?: The American Automobile Past, Present, and Driverless

by Dan Albert

Overview

“[Dan Albert] has a way of bringing automotive history to life.” —Jason Fogelson, Forbes

The plain, old-fashioned, human-driven car built the American economy and helped shape our democratic creed. Driver’s ed made teenagers into citizens; auto repair made boys into men. For nearly a century, car culture has triumphed. But have we finally reached the end of the road? Fewer young people are learning to drive. Ride hailing is replacing car buying, and with electrification, a long and noble tradition of amateur car repair will soon come to an end.

When a robot takes over the driver’s seat, what’s to become of us? Are We There Yet? carries us from horseless buggies to superhighways, and like any good road trip, it’s an adventure so fun you won’t even notice how much you’ve learned along the way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393292756
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/11/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	300,399
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Dan Albert holds a PhD in history from the University of Michigan. He writes about the past, present, and future of cars for n + 1 magazine.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Nation of Drivers 1

Part 1

1 The First Revolution: Let's Review 15

2 The Car for People Who Have None 34

3 GM's Sloan: We're Not in Kansas Anymore 57

4 Automotive Anxiety During the Great Depression 79

5 The Hidden History of the Superhighways That Transformed America 98

Part 2

6 Midcentury Flying Cars 113

7 Foreign Invaders from Sputnik to the Bug 134

8 The Automotive Womb 157

9 The Energy Crisis Ends the Aquarian Age 176

10 Bands of Citizens Take On Dicky, Jerry, and Jimmy 197

11 The Un-Cars That Nobody Loved 217

Part 3

12 Future Visions of Robot Cars 243

13 Think of the Lives We'll Save: The Rhetorics of Robot Cars 262

14 My Car Has Left for College 281

15 Kids Today 303

Conclusion: Carpeted Highways and Big Yellow Birds 325

Acknowledgments 331

Notes 333

Illustration Credits 367

Index 369

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/01/2019

Albert, a writer for n+1 magazine, has constructed an idiosyncratic historical narrative of American car culture and its technological underpinnings. His prose is witty and smart, self-effacing and erudite. Readers are taken on a historical tour of the emergence of car culture, from its unregulated and underappreciated beginnings in the early 20th century. For example, we learn early on that the nascent development of the internal combustion engine was not a sure thing; that in fact there were potential alternatives to this now standard engine. In addition to steam power engines, there were early efforts at electric vehicle development in the early 1900s, far earlier than the contemporary wave of Tesla cars. Albert's narrative is entertaining and informative, and it effectively spans the intersection of people and technologies with American culture and business history. This work also considers the modern question of driverless vehicles for readers who are interested in more contemporary car culture questions. VERDICT An extremely engaging work of narrative nonfiction for those who enjoy popular historical and technology reads.—Jim Hahn, Univ. Lib., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

Library Journal

"No matter what the future holds, you’ll be better prepared to understand, engage with and even shape it after you read Are We There Yet?"

Drive - Edward Niedermeyer

"The classic title hints at this witty take on the history, and future, of the American automobile."

New Books from Old Friends: 20 Hot Titles for Summer - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Jane Henderson

"Written in a witty and infectious style, Are We There Yet? is a briskly paced guided tour of the economic, political, geographic, environmental, and aspirational influences cars have had on Americans, and vice versa. Dan Albert makes this history interesting and relevant in its own right while showing how it bears directly on the most recent automotive frontier: the much-anticipated driverless car. He reminds us how fundamentally intertwined the automobile, the built environment, and human nature have been, and that they will remain so for the foreseeable future."

Kevin L. Borg

"From the ‘in honor and in loving memory of’ dedication at the beginning to the final car crash at the end, [Dan] Albert never loses his clever, addictively readable voice."

The Best Summer Books of 2019 - Week - Jeva Lange

"Dan Albert is a unique voice in American letters—a historian of the car and its culture with a driver’s passion and a sense of the absurd. His wise, funny, erudite tour of the American car and road is part memoir, part history, part polemic. All of it is necessary. It’s like taking a long drive through the twentieth century with someone who can actually identify the sights."

Keith Gessen

"From Henry Ford to Elon Musk, from seat belts to self-driving cars, Dan Albert takes us on a kaleidoscopic tour of the automobile’s evolution, showing us how the future of transportation cannot be understood without investigating the past."

Nathan Bomey

"[Dan Albert] is an automotive historian of the highest caliber…Weaving together data points and anecdotes from over a century of material while covering aspects of the automobile as diverse as engine cooling and urban renewal takes extraordinary craft, and Are We There Yet? pulls it off in style."

The Drive - Edward Neidermeyer