Customer Reviews

Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've noticed how much design caters to car traffic for some time now. Not only are bus systems left behind in plans, but it is also difficult to walk anywhere these days. I'm not crazy about her ideas like raising gas prices, or anything that raises the misery factor for low income people struggling to keep their jalopy running (like harsh smog test requirements) but the idea of making alternative transportation easier and more attractive is good.

There could have been a little more attention to using the already in place car infrastructure for alternative fuel vehicles. But that doesn't take away from the basic idea behind the book.

No wonder our American jobs are being outsourced oversees - we demand more money from our employers so that we can drive farther from our home to work and spend, spend, spend on our cars to do this. We think buying a cheaper house in the 'sububs' saves money, but we spend more money on our cars and gas bills in the long term than we initially bargained for. Living closer to where we work maybe the solution - or telecommuiting (whatever happened to that idea?) but that's not really the point of the book, just an unstated theme throughout. I thought I could live in the county and work from home, but now I spend $500 a month on driving into the city and wasting precious time trapped in a car. Live and Learn - and think about reading this book (or at least the reviews...)

They should put up a stand in front of every cardealer's showroom to preach the message. Though some of your writers said Kay's message was nothing new, it clearly makes a polemic that carries more weight and more solid and elegantly put information than Fastfood Nation. Actually, it replaces or supplements that book by saying if we moved more...we'd be healthy, wealthy and wiser, never mind saving the planet's diversity and co2 emissions.

I, too, am concerned about the decay of our cities in the name of car culture. Asphalt Nation is a nice light reptitious long read about the problems, how we got here, and a few ideas on how to fix the problems autos have wrought. While clearly written, the author is repetitive, and I think would have had more impact in a 10-20 page article.

I find it incredible that I have not come upon Asphalt Nation before. I read books on the city and the environment continuously and have consulted the circuit of such writers without exploring this one, or finding its equal. Not only does this book have intelligent values, but it expresses them with elegance and humor. Unlike other books of this nature, it doesn't harangue but uses facts and arguments from lifestyle, the environment, economics and history plus solutions that made clear to me why we are running backwards...with sprawl, pollution, traffic, etc. Hey, and even engaging pictures! I
heartily recommend this book.

I had heard of this book and heard the author but didn't realize how compelling and well-written the actual story would be, not only in delivering insights on the way we have become car-dependent but in portraying the root of so many of our environmental and urban ills. Not just a diatribe, this book offers a broad and literary tale of our massive shift to automobility. Both more eloquent and factual than similar books (e.g. "The Geography of Nowhere" and "Fastfood Nation") it is a a good read and influenced my outlook on current events from global warming to farm and forest destruction to being just plain stuck in traffic. I heartily recommend it.

This book is very thorough about describing how cars became ingrained in our lives, but it didn't offer much insight. I'm guessing most people who read this book have some notion of how urban sprawl leads to car dependency and lack of inner-city. This book does little more than re-state that.

Additional weak points:
- No presence of counter argument.
- Repetitive
- Not enough attention was payed to the 'taking it back' portion of the title. Roughly 4/5 of the book were taking over America, 1/5 taking it back. No new ideas were presented in the 'taking it back' section.

This is a horrible excuse for a piece of literature. Although her subject matter is occasionally rational, the repetition and horrible alliteration she uses is painful. What should have been written in 3 concise chapters drags on for 18 mind-numbing ones. I reccommend that no one reads this book as it was a waste of a quite a bit of my time, although I do commend her on her efforts to enlight the world on the ever-present environmental problems that we face on a daily basis.

Being that we are all citizens of the Asphault Nation, this book should be required reading. It explores the consequences of America's obsession with creating communities and cities that absolutley require an automobile. It is a wake up call to a nation that is creating unsustainable, and what will become unlivable, civilization. The only reason it doesn't get a five star rating from this reader is that it doesn't go far enough in proposing ways in which we may turn the current trends around and create long term solutions to the problems that American society is facing in regards to urban sprawl and environmental destruction.

Although I wholeheartedly agree with Jane Holtz Kay that the car is ruining America (I just junked mine and started taking the train), I wish she had done a better job of writing about the problem. Asphalt Nation is chock-full of cliche's -- sometimes repeated on the same page -- and contains such horrible misquotations as "think locally, act globally" (p. 267), that one wonders whether the author was awake during much of her task, or perhaps writing under a strict deadline.

The content is wanting too. Despite the "how we can take it back" part of the subtitle, the book contains no apendices or tables listing resources for anti-car activism; I have had to jot down notes _en passant_ and look up the names she mentions using the internet.

This is all very unfortunate, because the point of the book needs to be made, and I give Jane Holtz Kay three stars for making it. But if this is the best kind of popular scholarship and writing we can expect in support of the anti-auto movement, then that movement is likely doomed.