Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape

Owen Gutfreund's Twentieth-Century Sprawl explains important--and largely unexamined--changes in the American landscape. He offers an illuminating look at how highways have dramatically transformed American communities, aiding growth and development in unsettled areas and undermining existing urban centers. Gutfreund takes a "follow the money" approach to show how government policies--from as early as the 1890s--subsidized the spread of cities and fueled a chronic nationwide dependence on c...