Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives [Hardcover]

Catherine Lutz (Author), Anne Lutz Fernandez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0230618138 | ISBN-13: 978-0230618138 | Publication Date: January 5, 2010

Carjacked   is an in-depth look at our obsession with cars. While the automobile’s contribution to global warming and the effects of volatile gas prices is widely known, the problems we face every day because of our cars are much more widespread and yet much less known -- from the surprising $14,000 that the average family pays each year for the vehicles it owns, to the increase in rates of obesity and asthma to which cars contribute, to the 40,000 deaths and 2.5 million crash injuries each and every year.

Carjacked details the complex impact of the automobile on modern society and shows us how to develop a healthier, cheaper, and greener relationship with cars.

                                                            http://www.carjacked.org/

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Americans’ infatuation with their cars is critiqued in this readable treatment. Replete with the ironic and irrational aspects of owning and driving cars, it partakes of car psychology to deliver its message about the statistical costs of four-wheeled freedom. Emphasizing the attachment of values such as personal independence to car ownership, not to mention self-image and status, Lutz and Fernandez cheerily saunter through automobile advertising and movies to show how mass media exploit people’s desire to buy cars. The authors offer many personal anecdotes about consumers’ experiences of the showdown in the automobile showroom as a narrative illustration of how people’s emotions battle it out with their finances in purchase decisions. Turning to life on the road, Lutz and Fernandez, relying on studies and interviews with about 100 drivers, look askance at public expenditure on automobile infrastructure, fractions of lives spent in cars––and lost in them by the tens of thousands annually. An agenda for personal and political action concludes the authors’ knowledgeable survey of car culture. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

Praise for Carjacked:

"The authors capture the fantasy and reality of our love of cars.They hold up a mirror to we, 'the people,' to let us look at our individual and collective glamour and bloat.  They ask, subtly and with a good amount of wit, if we know what we are doing to ourselves?  You must read it to learn the answers, which might surprise you." - John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy and author of Why We Hate the Oil Companies

 

"Carjacked should be required reading for anyone with a driver's license. It lays out the ways that bigger, faster and more plentiful cars on the road have altered America in dramatic way, influencing foreign policy, infrastructure investment, national health and personal wealth. If we wish to drive into a better future, rather than collide with it head on, it's time to address our addiction to the automobile - and this book is the perfect starting place." – Leigh Stringer, president of Advance Strategies and author of The Green Workplace

"Exceptionally well-researched and passionately, yet logically, argued, Carjacked will make you rethink your relationship not only with your car, but with the entire economic and physical infrastructure that has built up around it. While acknowledging our love of cars, it offers practical advice on how to ensure that the relationship is affordable, beneficial and sustainable, both for individuals and for society." – Cleo Paskal, Associate Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs and author of Global Warring

“Strongly recommended for all willing to consider that we need to ‘step away from the car.”--Library Journal

 

“Knowledgeable survey of car culture.”--Booklist

 

"Americans' infatuation with their cars is critiqued in this readable treatment.  Replete with the ironic and irrational aspects of owning and driving cars, it partakes of car psychology to deliver its message about the statistical costs of four-wheeled freedom.  Emphasizing the attachment of values such as personal independence to car ownership, not to mention self-image and status, Lutz and Fernandez cheerily saunter through automobile advertising and movies to show how mass media exploit people's desire to buy cars." --Booklist

 

"Authors Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez effectively and accessibly lay out the social, financial, historical, and of course, environmental impact of America's love affair with the internal combustion engine." --Planet Green

 

"Carjacked aims to answer certain questions that lie deep in our brains - the unnoticed, unremarked-upon equivalents of spare tires in trunks: Why do cars play such a central role in our lives"  Are they really as essential as they seem? Is there a sager, saner way to live with the car and have the mobility we need?" --Connecticut Post

 

"This need for a more balanced transportation environment also underscores Catherine Lutz's and Anne Lutz Fernandez's powerful and sobering Carjacked, which examines the many unanticipated consequences of car culture. No mere 'anti-car' manifesto, Carjacked is an anthropological study of what the authors refer to as the "car system," of which the automakers are merely one element...They have assembled a fascinating and disturbing portrait of something we accept as normal -- indeed essential -- but which has, in many ways, betrayed much of its original promise."  --The Winnipeg Free Press

 

"Thought-provoking inquiry into the role of cars in our lives, most especially the suburban lifestyle that cars created. Their main conclusion is for Americans to examine how they use their cars as opposed to how they think they use them. In other words, to strip away the romantic fancies fed by memories, folklore and advertisers, and face the reality of the best way to get from A to B. Such a reality check up, they argue, could result in a more rational approach to driving with people using cars less and walking or bicycling or taking buses or trains more." --The Providence Journal

 

"Rigorously researched and briskly written" --The Post and Courier

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (January 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230618138
• ISBN-13: 978-0230618138
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #381,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting examination of the car culture, March 15, 2010

By 

Jason Stokes (St. Louis) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives (Hardcover)

I particularly enjoyed this book's layout of our American car culture - from the dreaminess of the 16 year old with their first keys, through the marketing process as buyer and seller, and ultimately, why the car culture has it's challenges, it was an entertaining read. I do admit, however, that it's very one sided - it's largely anti-car, as can be expected from the title, but not violently or disruptively so.

Particularly challenging for me were two chapters - one outlining how difficult it is for the working poor with very little money to have a car, and the challenges that come with being carless in a world built for automobiles, and the other chapter outlining the damage that cars do to lives and property in "accidents." Cars may be safer now than 30 years ago, but since we drive them more, and are more careless while doing so, driving a car remains the most risky thing most of us do any day.

In all, a very well reasoned and well put forward argument about moving from the auto-centered (and auto-required) culture into something a little more beneficial to all of society. I highly recommend this book.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough, thoughtful study, January 24, 2010

By 

Boston fan - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives (Hardcover)

This book is a well-researched and thoughtful examination of a an aspect of our lives that we, as a society, have embraced. The authors allow us to take a close look at the multi-faceted effects that cars have on our lives, both individually and collectively. Engaging, entertaining and intelligent.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read chapter 9, "Full Metal Jacket," more than once, April 9, 2010

By 

J. L LaRegina "Jim LaRegina" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives (Hardcover)

Since before I obtained a driver's license, let alone owned a car, I dreaded the idea of driving. It might have just been my personality - or had I realized the crazy-danger of automobile travel even if nothing articulated that thought as well as the book CARJACKED: THE CULTURE OF THE AUTOMOBILE & ITS EFFECT ON OUR LIVES, does? As a boy I was a passenger when accidents happened once with my mother driving and twice with my brother behind the wheel, though none caused injury. An even narrower escape came one time my father was driving, when an out-of-control car sped across the street, missing us by maybe five feet, crashing into a storefront. And I can remember that by time I started driving, three children who attended my school died in car wrecks and the families of three other kids I knew lost their parents to automobile accidents. All of that may have been in the back of my mind when I decided cars had no appeal to me, as I did not desire luxury or sports autos and certainly hated the limits of holding a steering wheel when I could have been on a train or bus, reading.

It took a long time but I've finally become a mass transit commuter, my only daily drive to and from the train station. I read CARJACKED over several train trips and if nothing else encourage readers to pick it up just for the book's ninth chapter, titled "Full Metal Jacket: The Body Count," which confirms everything about driving that made me wish cars were not a necessity for most Americans:

-Thank God for all the lives Ralph Nader saved promoting seat belts and air bags, but nonetheless CARJACKED reports 112 Americans still die every day in auto accidents. In the name of the so-called war on terror, people allow the government to shred the Bill of Rights and spend billions but don't seem to notice their own 4 wheel death-mobiles are the leading cause of lost lives for people under the age of 34.

-Since 1899, car accidents have caused 3.4 million American deaths, more than all U.S. wars combined. "Give peace a chance," we say, but we must say, "Give mass transportation a chance," even louder.

-Pedestrians in America are three times likelier to be killed by cars than pedestrians in Germany and six times likelier than in the Netherlands, as the latter two nations have better automobile regulations and more mass transportation.

There's a lot more. Read CARJACKED.

I'll see you on the train.