Autopia
Publisher: Alfabet
How cars changed our world
In 1885, Carl Benz designed and produced the very first combustion engine car. Only 150 years later, in 2035, its entire production is subject to a EU mandated stop.
Initially mainly a toy for rich adventurers seeking the thrill of speed and a flirtation with death, over time cars became the jewel of consumer society. They offered their owner freedom and flexibility: Cars allowed people to go on holidays and discover nature and enabled city dwellers to move to green suburbs. People began to live away from where they worked and shopped, and the socially mixed city gave way to a larger divide in classes.
Only car owners could participate in the modern era. In Autopia, Peter Giesen shows how cars completely changed our world. He describes how entrepreneurs and designers like Henry Ford, André Citroën and Ferdinand Porsche turned them into mass products, he tells the stories of poets and artists like Bertolt Brecht and Elvis Presley, who fell for the automobile’s charm, and he casts a glance into the future. Peter Giesen writes a requiem for the internal combustion engine car, the machine that was the focus of our dreams for a century and a half.
Praise:
‘The historian and de Volkskrant journalist collects fine anecdotes, which give fragrance, colour and flavour to what he himself calls ‘a cultural history’. (…) A lucid description of societal change.’ – NRC, ****
‘Autopia is not just a wonderful panorama of history – it goes straight to the heart of human hubris, of transformation and triumph, crisis and opportunity. An amazing and insightful ride through modernity.’ – Philipp Blom, German historian, novelist and journalist
