Foreword by William Cronon

Acknowledgments

Prologue: A Car of One's Own

Part One | Before the Automobile, 1880-1905

1. Roads and Reformers

Part Two | Dawn of the Motor Age, 1895-1919

2. Automotive Pioneers

3. Building for Traffic

Photo Gallery One

Part Three | Creating Car Country, 1919-1941

4. Motor-Age Geography

5. Fueling the Boom

6. The Paths Out of Town

Photo Gallery Two

Part Four | New Patterns, New Standards, New Landscapes, 1940-1960

7. Suburban Nation

Epilogue | Reaching for the Car Keys

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

For most people in the United States, going almost anywhere begins with reaching for the car keys. This is true, Christopher Wells argues, because the United States is Car Country?a nation dominated by landscapes that are difficult, inconvenient, and often unsafe to navigate by those who are not sitting behind the wheel of a car.

The prevalence of car-dependent landscapes seems perfectly natural to us today, but it is, in fact, a relatively new historical development. In Car Country, Wells rejects the idea that the nation's automotive status quo can be explained as a simple byproduct of an ardent love affair with the automobile. Instead, he takes readers on a tour of the evolving American landscape, charting the ways that transportation policies and land-use practices have combined to reshape nearly every element of the built environment around the easy movement of automobiles. Wells untangles the complicated relationships between automobiles and the environment, allowing readers to see the everyday world in a completely new way. The result is a history that is essential for understanding American transportation and land-use issues today.

Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48LTKOxxrXQ

Christopher W. Wells is associate professor of environmental history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.