More than any other technology, cars have transformed American popular culture. Cars have created vast wealth as well as novel dreams of freedom and mobility. They have transformed our sense of distance and made the world infinitely more available. They have inspired cinema, music, and literature; they have, by their need for roads, bridges, filling stations, huge factories, and global supply chains, re-engineered the world. Bryan Appleyard's brilliantly insightful book tells the story of the rise and fall of the incredible machine that made the modern world what it is today.