Autobooks: The Car Book of the Year
06/01/2005
Drive On! A Social History of the Motor CarSerious car enthusiasts have doubtlessly amassed a burdensome collection of literature ranging from general histories to one-marque tomes, periodicals, and ephemera pertaining to their favorite automobiles. These auto-obsessed bibliophiles should risk the collapse of a shelf by acquiring one more book, Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car—an essential addition to any automotive library. For more than 40 years, its author, L.J.K. Setright, has been among the most articulate and intelligent voices to resonate in magazines and books devoted to our preferred subject. His may also be the most iconoclastic and entertaining.
In Drive On! Setright examines the century-plus history of the automobile, beginning with a decade-by-decade review that considers the world-changing cause and effect—social, scientific, economic, and political—of the motorcar and the industry it spawned. Four additional sections elucidate facts and theories both trivial and monumental. I learned, for instance, that Gran Turismo, the expression from which the initials were derived, was coined in Italy in the context of the 1929 1,750 cc Alfa Romeo, and that a load of silk took three years to travel by pack animals from China to Europe.
Setright considers Virgil, Samuel Johnson, Karl Marx, and other noncar notables, and while his elegant style is serious in the extreme, he is also wickedly opinionated and witty. Unlike many British journalists, his tone is not myopically Anglocentric; rather, Setright brilliantly employs the English language to talk about an international passion.
Drive On! is available in hardcover (405 pages) and paperback, with black-and-white illustrations, from your local bookstore or online.
Granta Books, www.granta.com