Readers may never look at their cars in quite the same way again.
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.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63936-230-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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