Divorce Your Car! : Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile [Paperback]

Katie Alvord (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2000

Alvord's perceptive gloss of the late, great, 20th century's pitiful auto intoxication is a fascinating read and a stunning contradiction of the fatuity that technology is neutral. Her gathering of stories illuminates the existence of a vital planet-wide, counter-car-culture. Witty, substantial and penetrating, Divorce Your Car! is a mighty persuasive job of work.?Stephanie Mills, from the Foreword

Our romance with cars, begun with enthusiasm more than 100 years ago, has in fact become a very troubled entanglement. Today's relationship with the automobile inflicts upon us pollution, noise, congestion, sprawl, big expenses, injury, and even death. Yet we continue to live with cars at a growing cost to ourselves and the environment.
What can people do about this souring affair? Divorce your car! Re-meet your feet, board a bike, take a train, pull out of this dysfunctional relationship with the automobile! Divorcing your car can take many forms, from simply using it less to not owning one at all. This practical guide shows how divorcing a car can be fun, healthy, money-saving, and helpful to the planet in the process.
Most other transportation reform books emphasize long-range political and economic policy. Divorce Your Car! speaks less about policy and more about realistic actions that individuals can take now to reduce their car-dependence. It encourages readers to change their own driving behavior without waiting for broader social change, stressing that individual action can drive social change.
Car-dependency is a serious problem, but Divorce Your Car! is leavened with love-affair and self-help analogies in the text as well as cartoon illustrations. From commuters crazed by congestion and soccer moms sick of chauffeuring, to environmentalists looking for auto alternatives?Divorce Your Car! provides all the reasons not to drive and the many alternative ways we can all get around without our cars.

Table of Contents

Introduction
PART 1: LOVE'S BEEN BLIND: HOW WE ENDED UP MARRIED TO CARS
1: Falling Head Over Wheels: The Advent of Cars
2: Other Suitors Drop by the Wayside: The Decline of Non-Car Transport
3: The Possessive Auto Takes Over the Lands

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A long-time advocate for transportation reform, Alvord prefers getting around on anythingAher own two feet, mass transit, bicyclesAbut a car. In this affable history-cum-how-to, she tracks the dramatic, negative impact of automobiles from the early days of the 1900s to the present. Among the evils are severe pollution levels, high rates of death and injury in car accidents, a decline in other modes of transport and sprawling highway development. Meanwhile, some cities around the world are in fact quite friendly toward nondrivers: Toronto has a great subway system and encourages bicycle riders; Copenhagen and some other cities have "free bikes" that allow people to leave a deposit and borrow a bike; San Francisco has pedestrian-only roads. Perhaps the book's best section is the last third, in which Alvord offers detailed, practical advice on how to avoid using a car, along with lists of the benefits of doing so. Walking around, for example, helps reduce stress and prevent osteoporosis. Crime rates go down in areas with increased pedestrian traffic. And the average speed of a commuting car (22 mph) isn't much faster than that of a bicycle (10-20 mph). Even for readers who are not ready to permanently abandon their auto, this book provides a wealth of ideas for unbuckling the seat belts and enjoying the fresh air. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In spite of America's enduring love with the automobile, there have always been those who have said it wouldn't last! Or at least there have been those who have suggested that it shouldn't last. Recent arguments include Jack Doyle's Taken for a Ride: Detroit's Big Three and the Politics of Pollution and Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back (1997). Most critics have looked to public policy or planning initiatives for solutions. Alvord, though, offers practical remedies available to anyone. She traces the history of America's dependency on the automobile and details why we should reconsider the relationship. The reasons include pollution from auto emissions and oil spills, the expense of car ownership and its hidden inconveniences, and the grim consequences of traffic accidents. She then examines substitutes for driving, such as walking, bicycling, shared ridership, public transit, alternative fuels, telephone, and e-mail. Alvord writes with good sense as well as humor, which should help her win converts. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: New Society Publishers (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865714088
• ISBN-13: 978-0865714083
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on the why and how of reducing car use, May 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Divorce Your Car! : Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile (Paperback)

I've come to realize that driving my car is not only killing the planet, it's killing me. Each time I return from a car trip to town it takes a few hours to clear the stress-induced traffic jam in my nervous system caused by more and more cars and congestion, faster driving speeds and hurriedness, and the increasing impatience and aggressiveness of drivers. The worse it gets, the more I want out. This is the best book I've seen on the why and how of getting out of our cars and onto our bikes, feet, and public transport. It's not preachy or fanatical, and presents the reader with a number of options ranging from keeping your car but using it less (a car-lite lifestyle), to going entirely car free. I'm now finding that this book's core message of driving less and enjoying life more really can work.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plant a garden in your driveway., June 6, 2001

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Divorce Your Car! : Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile (Paperback)

We live in "a drive-in, drive-up, drive-thru, and drive-by society" (p. 57), and the urban sprawl of a city in which I live, Phoenix, is no exception. There is no escaping the problem of the automobile, even in our country's national parks. For instance, there are 7000 parking spaces in Yosemite (700 per mile), and 12,000 parking spaces in Yellowstone (p. 41). In many ways, America's addiction to cars is easily comparable to cigarette addiction.

The premise of Alvord's well-reasoned and well-researched book is that "we are addicted to our cars, and the relationship is fundamentally unhealthy for ourselves, our environment, and ultimately (and ironically) our economy" (p. xiii). In the Introduction to her compelling book, she writes, "divorce from a car is not only possible, it can bring unexpected delights and great rewards. On a collective level, divorcing cars can bring us clean air, clearer water, less noise, and friendlier communities. It can foster better transportation options, more compact cities, and correspondingly more farmland, wildlife habitat, and parks. On a personal level, it can be incredibly liberating, bringing less stress, more money, better health and fitness, reduced risk of accidental death, and a simpler lifestyle" (p. 5).

The first five chapters of Alvord's book examine our seduction by the automobile, revealing "our union with the car is in part a forced marriage and not simply a free-market choice" (p. 7). The next five chapters consider "some of the symptoms of love sickness caused by our automotive marriage" (p. 63), air pollution, climate change, oil spills, water pollution, costly repairs, noise, obesity, road rage, social isolation, real expenses, and fatal car crashes. In the last seven chapters of her book, Alvord offers up real alternatives to the automobile, walking, bicycling, shared transportation, and telecommuting, for instance, before she addresses "the big quality-of-life advantages of driving less or even living without a car" (p. 125).

G. Merritt

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent resource, April 12, 2004

By 

Amazonbombshell (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Divorce Your Car! : Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile (Paperback)

I checked DIVORCE YOUR CAR out of our local library, because the title made me wonder how such a thing could be possible. I read the whole thing, and I was astounded at how simple it really is to use your car less.

The first two parts of the book cover the history of the car and the American "marriage" to it, as well as the reasons that same marriage has turned into a disaster. The third part then offers practical solutions for non-car travel, going into great detail about walking, biking, mass-transit, ride-sharing, etc, and providing plenty of information on the benefits, drawbacks and availability of each, as well as how to get in contact with alternative travel associations in your area, or how to start your own.

It's a slim volume, but the quality is evident. This book really woke me up to something MAJOR I could do to improve my own quality of life and the planet's. My fiance and I currently own one car between us, and though we've been doing alright with it, we'd been planning to buy another! After reading DIVORCE YOUR CAR, we're realizing we really don't need to have more than one, and we're now planning ways to use our bikes and mass transit more, and actively discouraging each other from taking trips we don't need to take by car. It's already making a big difference, and someday we hope to go entirely car-free, with this book (which I've since purchased from Amazon) and our creativity as guides.

Thank you, Katie Alvord, for such an excellent wake-up call!