Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives

by Lutz, Catherine; Lutz Fernandez, Anne

• ISBN13: 9780230618138
• ISBN10: 0230618138
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-05
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

For most of the twentieth century, America's love affair with the car went unchallenged. Gas prices were kept low, ever more roads and highways built and maintained, and this year's model always looked a little better than last year's. Then, in fairly short order, gas jumped to $4 a gallon, the housing bubble imploded and the current economic crisis was upon us. Suddenly, car owners had reason to question what is on average, their biggest household expense.Carjacked gets into the meat of America's obsession with cars and explodes myth after myth along the way. While the automobile's contribution to global warming and the effects of volatile gas prices are is widely known, the problems Americans face every day because of their cars are much more widespread and yet much less known - from the surprising $14,000 per year that the average car costs to own to the uptick of incidences of obesity and asthma that car ownership seemingly causes to the more than 6 million car accidents a year at a cost of $230 billion.Carjacked sheds new light on the complex impact of the automobile on American society and shows us how to develop a new and healthier relationship with cars, a relationship that is both cheaper and greener.

Author Biography

Catherine Lutz is a Watson Institute professor at Brown University where she holds a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology. As an author and editor, Professor Lutz has published nine books. Until recently, she was the president of the American Ethnological Society, the oldest professional anthropological association in the United States. Anne Lutz Fernandez is a former marketer and investment banker with fifteen years of corporate experience. She is an English teacher in Westport, Connecticut.

Table of Contents

The United States of Automobiles	p. 1
Dream Car: Myth- making, American Values, and the Automobile	p. 13
The Pitch: How they Sell	p. 39
The Pitch: How We Buy	p. 61
The Catch: What We Really Pay	p. 79
The Catch: The Rich Get Richer	p. 101
What Drives Us	p. 127
Getting Carsick	p. 161
Full Metal Jacket: The Body Count	p. 117
Conclusion: A Call to Action	p. 205
Endnotes	p. 229
Acknowledgment	p. 247
Index	p. 249
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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