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The Automobile and American Culture, edited by David L. Lewis and Laurence Goldstein, offers a sweeping exploration of the automobile’s impact on American society. Integrating both scholarly and popular approaches, this landmark anthology brings together essays, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and graphics to describe the profound and multifaceted impact of one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating inventions on American life. Now in its revised and expanded form, the collection provides an even closer look at the past, present, and future of America’s automobile revolution.With contributions from acclaimed writers, artists, musicians, and scholars, this volume examines the automobile’s influence on every corner of American society—the city and the farm, fashion and art, domestic life, popular culture, youth, gender, sexuality, and the evolving American psyche. Iconic figures such as Chuck Berry, Carl Sandburg, and Bruce Springsteen appear alongside incisive academic analysis, underscoring the car’s central place in both creative imagination and lived experience.Organized thematically, The Automobile and American Culture explores how the automobile not only transformed the physical landscape and economy, but also became a powerful cultural symbol—one both praised and critiqued as it shaped the nation’s identity, values, and dreams. From the industry’s Michigan roots to roadside Americana and critiques of modern car culture, this anthology stands as the definitive reference for anyone seeking to understand the enduring love affair between Americans and their cars, and the way this relationship continues to influence society today.

From its invention in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, the automobile crisscrossed the world, completely took over the cities, and became a feature of daily life. Considered basic to the American lifestyle, the car reflected individualism, pragmatism, comfort, and above all modernity. In Latin America, it served as a symbol of distinction, similar to jewelry or fine clothing. In The Cultural Life of the Automobile, Guillermo Giucci focuses on the automobile as an instrument of social change through its “kinetic modernity” and as an embodiment of the tremendous social impact of technology on cultural life.

Material culture—how certain objects generate a wide array of cultural responses—has been the focus of much scholarly discussion in recent years. The automobile wrought major changes and inspired images in language, literature, and popular culture. Focusing primarily on Latin America but also covering the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Giucci examines how the automobile was variously adapted by different cultures and how its use shaped and changed social and economic relationships within them. At the same time, he shows how the “automobilization” of society became an essential support for the development of modern individualism, and the automobile its clearest material manifestation.