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markk's review
2.0
There are few inventions which have done more to define our lives today than the automobile. Because of this, any understanding of the modern world requires understanding the car and how it has changed our lives. Yet for all the promise of its subtitle, Steven Parissien doesn’t do this. His book is not so much a history of the automobile as it is a history of the companies that manufactured them. He provides numerous summaries of the lives of the executives and descriptions of some of the key cars their companies produced, but little in the way of the broader social or cultural impact of the car. The driver is almost completely absent from his narrative, reduced in Parissien’s narrative to a lumpenconsumerariat with as much definition as a herd of milling sheep.
But the most disappointing problem with this book is its sheer sloppiness. The book is plagued with minor factual and technical errors, the apparent result less of author ignorance than of poor editing. It gives the entire work a feeling of one of those 1980s American cars Parissien describes as being rushed to market before all of the flaws were ironed out. These flaws are unfortunate, as the author generally comes across as knowledgeable and passionate about his subject, but together they limit his labor to a book that book that only scratches the surface of a deep and fascinating subject.
But the most disappointing problem with this book is its sheer sloppiness. The book is plagued with minor factual and technical errors, the apparent result less of author ignorance than of poor editing. It gives the entire work a feeling of one of those 1980s American cars Parissien describes as being rushed to market before all of the flaws were ironed out. These flaws are unfortunate, as the author generally comes across as knowledgeable and passionate about his subject, but together they limit his labor to a book that book that only scratches the surface of a deep and fascinating subject.
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