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Our continued use of the combustion engine car in the 21st century, despite many rational arguments against it, makes it more and more difficult to imagine that transport has a sustainable future. Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present "car society." Combining social, psychological, and structural explanations, the author concludes that the ability of cars to convey transcendental experience, especially for men, explains our attachment to the vehicle.

Gijs Mom is an historian of technology and teaches at Eindhoven University of Technology. A literary historian turned automotive engineer, Mom is author of The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age (Johns Hopkins 2004); founder of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M); and editor of Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies (Berghahn Books).