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.
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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.
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Saving Ourselves from Big Car

Saving Ourselves from Big Car

by David Obst
Saving Ourselves from Big Car

Saving Ourselves from Big Car

by David Obst

Hardcover

$27.95 
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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231210423
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 09/16/2025
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

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).

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
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