Resumen de Car Country: An Environmental History by Christopher W. Wells (review)
Christopher Wells�s environmental history of the American adoption of the automobile was more than a decade in the making, and its notes and bibliography fill 115 pages. Deftly written and well-illustrated, Car Country rejects the notions that the automotive landscape emerged either as the byproduct of consumer desire for automobiles or as the result of conspiracies to eviscerate public transit. Each of its four sections covers two decades, starting in 1880, before automobiles, when urban and rural reformers campaigned for better roads (pp. 3�34), driven by the desire to �control nature run amok,� in the form of dirt, disease, mud, and inconvenience. Reformers, later joined by cyclists and motorists, began the physical transformation into what would become �car country� and promulgated assumptions about land use and the centralization of taxation and administration that eroded local control of city streets and highways. Part 2 (pp. 37�104) examines �the dawn of the motor age,� including the redesign of European automobiles for rough American roads, the emergence of mass production, and the Model T. It then traces how moralistic highway reformers were replaced by �engineers and administrators guided by faith in the power of science and efficiency� (p. 103). They had to balance the competing interests of farmers, who wanted short routes focused on markets, and tourists, who wanted long-distance recreational roads. In cities, property owners were increasingly marginalized by the competing interests of street traction companies, pedestrians, and motorists.
