Details

<p> List of Figures<br> Preface</p>
<p> <strong>Introduction</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Explaining the car: Prolegomena for a history of North-Atlantic automobilism</li>
<li> Introduction: writing a synthesis &#xa0;</li>
<li> Do narratives explain?</li>
<li> Constructing a master narrative</li>
<li> Developing an explanatory toolbox</li>
<li> Conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>PART I: EMERGENCE (1895 - 1918)</strong></p>
<p> <strong>Chapter 1. Racing, touring, tinkering: constructing the adventure machine (1895 – 1914/1917)</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> First phase: emergence and roots of the petrol car (until 1902)</li>
<li> Second phase: resistance against elite touring in heavy family cars (1902 – 1908)</li>
<li> A first analysis of automotive adventure: the masculine ‘conquest of nature’</li>
<li> Third phase: the “small capitalist” and the “average man” (1908 until the war)</li>
<li> Conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>Chapter 2. How it feels to be run over: the grammar of early automobile adventure</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> Driving and writing: Analyzing ‘affinities’ of touristic and artistic experiences</li>
<li> ‘Auto-poetics’: mainstream authors</li>
<li> Literary resistance against the car: Critical voices from the UK</li>
<li> Colonialism by car: Gendered travel writing</li>
<li> Male violence and aggression: A French-Belgian group of writer-motorists</li>
<li> Sub-literary novels: the Williamsons and youth novels</li>
<li> Flight Forward: The avant-garde, silent movies, and the celebration of automotive violence</li>
<li> Tarkington, Cather and Dreiser: auto-poetics before America’s entry into the war</li>
<li> Enhanced Adventures: Analysis and conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>Chapter 3. Driving on aggression: The First World War and the systems approach to the car</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> Preparing for war (1): clubs, the military, and aggression</li>
<li> Preparing for war (2): organizing mobility</li>
<li> Mobilization, immobility, remobilization: aggression, violence and atrocities</li>
<li> War trophies 1 to 3: the truck, logistics and maintenance</li>
<li> War trophy 4: thanatourism and other adventures</li>
<li> Ending the war, ending the chapter: conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>PART II: PERSISTENCE (1918 - 1940)</strong></p>
<p> <strong>Chapter 4. “Why apologize for pleasure?” Consuming the Car in Boom and Bust</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> The car as commodity; its spread among the Atlantic middle class</li>
<li> European car consumption and ‘Americanization’: eagerness compared</li>
<li> The car as ‘necessity’: A profile of car use in the Interbellum</li>
<li> Migration, mass tourism and the family car</li>
<li> Conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>Chapter 5. Translation and Transition: Re-adjusting the Technology and Culture of Middle Class Family Adventures</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> Orchestrating Car Technology: Constructing the Closed Automobile</li>
<li> The process of Prosthetization: Mutually Adjusting Skills and Technology</li>
<li> Multiple Adventures: Thrills, Skills, and Risks</li>
<li> Conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>Chapter 6. Conquest and Domination: Domesticated Violence and the Coldness of Distance</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> An avant-garde in autopoetic travel experience: the conquest of the ‘periphery’</li>
<li> Domesticating adventure: the family as collective subject</li>
<li> Flows and violence: urban culture and the middleclass family</li>
<li> With or without a car: a women’s adventure?</li>
<li> The ubiquitous car: a spectrum of adventures, adjusted to middleclass taste</li>
<li> The cult of cool: becoming cyborg</li>
<li> Symbolisms and affinities: avant-garde and popular culture</li>
<li> Conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>Chapter 7. Swarms into flow:&#xa0; The Contested Emergence of the Automobile System</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> Coping with the car’s unreliability: maintenance, repair, and the functional adventure</li>
<li> Transnationalizing the local: planning and building national road networks</li>
<li> Contested order: spatial planners versus engineers</li>
<li> Rescuing automotive adventure: the construction of road safety</li>
<li> The battle of the systems: road versus rail and the ‘coordination crisis’</li>
<li> Conclusions</li>
</ul>
<p> <strong>Transcendence and the automotive production of mobility: Conclusions on half a century of North-Atlantic automobilism</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Introduction</li>
<li> Crossing borders: Half a century of North-Atlantic automobilism</li>
<li> Crossing boundaries: Adventure, fiction and the explanation of the car's persistence</li>
<li> Some closing remarks on methodology and future research</li>
</ul>

<p> <strong>Gijs Mom</strong> is an historian of technology and teaches at Eindhoven University of Technology. A literary historian turned automotive engineer, Mom is author of <em>The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age</em> (Johns Hopkins 2004); founder of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M); and editor of <a href="http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/trans/"><em>Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies</em></a> (Berghahn Books).</p>