This is a really good book, in spite of its 734 pages. Non-fiction, an in-depth look at the American auto industry from its early days to the mid-1980s as it weathered the storms of oil and gas price crises in the early 70s and again in the early 80s. Halberstam covers how the big American car giants took no heed of the early warnings to make smaller, more gas-efficient autos, warnings about the cars made in Japan and their popularity. America's long enjoyed affluence was about to experience some rough times.Good chapters about Henry Ford and his genius for all things mechanical - a man perfect for the times, but in his old age was still stuck in those times, unable to move forward into the future.I'm old enough to remember the large cars (black, of course) in the 40s, then the big American gas guzzlers, colorful and comfortable, and I clearly remember the gas lines in the 70s when we waited in long lines to fill our tanks. We were restricted to odd or even days, depending on our car license plate number. Then again in the 80s when the price of gas plummeted, smaller oil companies went out of business, and larger oil & gas companies laid off hundreds, then thousands of workers, trickling down to other businesses such as real estate. When you lose your job and no one is hiring say goodbye to the mortgage. No one to sell it to either.Halberstam mentions throughout that the "economic utopia" that America thought it had reached in the 1950s could not last...thus "the culture of adversity" to come.For non-fiction, it reads like a very interesting novel, with ongoing characters all moving along a timeline - a timeline of the invention and improvement of automobiles, comparing the "cars" development in Japan with Nisson and in the U.S. with Ford (both were the number two automakers in their respective countries). With the fall of the Shah of Iran and the OPEC oil embargoes in the late 79s and 1980s, all of the American industrial complex was vulnerable to industrious, disciplined Japan. The sudden rise in the price of oil caused shortages and panic in most of the world, especially those countries that were not oil producers, such as Japan. This caused those countries which manufactured cars to move toward smaller, more efficient cars. But not so much in the US where the big car mentality still reigned. It took many years and many mistakes for the Detroit auto industry to finally give in, but not until Japan, Korea, and Germany were making headway selling their cars (Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Volkswagon) in America. This did not happen overnight.Only SOME of the blame goes to the manufacturing/design side though. The money people, the Finance people who had to approve the expenditure for better cars did not want to spend it. Being on the financial side, their natural tendency was to save the company money. So the two sides were constantly having internal struggles. and most of the time Finance won. I was surprised at what a strong influence the Financial departments had on what cars got produced and what didn't.The US auto industry had to be dragged into the new century, finally providing good gas mileage, better-made cars that lasted longer than 3 or 4 years and service facilities for cars that needed some repair work, as well as warranties - none of which were provided until foreign car competition arrived. This book was published in 1986. Since then we have seen improvements in vehicle safety regulations that have saved lives. We have seen efforts at improving quality. We have seen some new cars that worked and some that didn't. There have been factory closings, permanent layoffs, families uprooted. Detroit is not the big automobile industry town it once was.Competition is actually a good thing. It's what keeps things moving forward, getting better. Without it, you have nations like Russia, stagnant in many areas. Making cars was not something Japan planned to do. Trucks were what Japan made for their farmers and workers. Few people even had cars; most used public transportation. The author points out that, in the beginning, Nissan was very reluctant to try to sell their cars in America. They were only interested in staying within their own locale. It took several years and small steps before they felt confident to even try.The big picture of the whole book is that between 1945 and 1975, Japan was pulling itself out of dire circumstances, having no food or resources to waste, having to rebuild and train workers. And between 1945 and 1975, America got too rich for its own good and squandered those riches, developed wasteful habits, and did not see what was coming.