"50 Years with Car and Driver commemorates the golden anniversary of the most popular car magazine on the planet. But more than that, 50 Years with Car and Driver tells the story of the American automobile and how the editors of the magazine witnessed that history and reported on it, firsthand. A look at how Car and Driver evolved from its beginnings as Sports Cars Illustrated, in the able hands of great automotive journalists such as Ken Purdy and John Christy, and then came into it own as the musclecar era of the Sixties dawned. Writers such as David E. Davis, Jr., Brock Yates and Patrick Bedard helped to craft a literary car magazine that drew as much inspiration from Tom Wolfe's writing as it did from the great cars of the day." "Through the Seventies the magazine's reputation solidified as the technical authority on new cars, and the literary tradition continued with such writers as Don Sherman and author P.J. O'Rourke." "Throughout the Eighties, the magazine prospered even when its writers went off the deep end - literally, getting stranded in Mexico during a Baja comparison test. Car and Driver watched over the virtual rebirth of the American car during that decade, with the renaissance at Ford through the Taurus and the revival of the Corvette, while keeping its lock on the strongest feature writing in the auto magazines with stories like Brock Yates's thirty-years-past observance of the death of James Dean." "The Nineties saw Car and Driver continue its leadership as the world's largest-selling automotive magazine. From the introduction of the Acura NSX and the Mazda Miata to the brand-new Mustangs and Corvettes that have come in just the past years, Car and Driver has been the authority that readers trust when it comes to 0-60 times, road tests and reviews." "Fifty Years with Car and Driver combines classic stories from the magazine, commentary by former staffers including the author, vintage and modern photos of the hottest and most important cars reviewed by the magazines, as well as stories from behind the scenes - with all the attitude, expertise and visual excitement readers have come to expect from the magazine itself."--BOOK JACKET.

Everything around us is designed and the word 'design' has become part of our everyday experience. But how much do we know about it? Fifty Cars That Changed the World imparts that knowledge listing the top 50 cars that have made a substantial impact in the world of British design today. From the1908 Ford Model T to the 1998 smart car, each entry offers a short appraisal to explore what has made their iconic status to give them a special place in design history.

Account of how and why cars kill, and why the automobile manufacturers have failed to make cars safe.

Women at the Wheel explores women's historical experience with automobiles. Katherine Parkin argues that in every regard, from learning to drive to repairing cars, from being a passenger to taking the wheel, women had a distinct experience with cars in American culture.

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. led the General Motors Corporation to international business success by virtue of his brilliant managerial practices and his insights into the new consumer economy he and General Motors helped to produce. Sloan's business biography, My Years With General Motors, was an instant best seller when it was first published in 1964 and is still considered indispensable reading by modern business giants.

A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go, a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea, uses a 3D printer to produce it, and implants it and saves a child's life. Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us. Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, self-driving vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening, alienating future: eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it, our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light, he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create—that even if our hands are not on the wheel, we will decide the driverless car's destination.

Marking the 50th anniversary of an icon of American industry, this book celebrates a half-century of Bobcat with brilliant images of these quintessentially American machines at work, including historical photographs and diagrams, alongside the full story of the only compact machines that have ever mattered. Often imitated but never equaled, the Bobcat skid-steer loader was born when some hardy souls in the Northern Plains needed a new way to get work done. The pictures in these pages show how the Bobcat loader has been moving American industry ever since, joined over the years by Bobcat excavators and trenchers, utility trucks and more. Bobcat Fifty Years chronicles the changes and innovations that have kept the company at the forefront of the nation’s compact machinery makers--from the invention of the Bob-Tach quick-change attachment system to the introduction of the Big Bob, the Mini-Bob, and the M-700, the first hydrostatic loader of its size. Here, again and again, is evidence of why Fortune Magazine named the Bobcat one of “America’s best”--one of the 100 American-made products that represent the best of their kind, anywhere in the world.

Learning to Drive • Now a major motion picture starring Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt now shows us another side of her talent. Learning to Drive is a surprising, revealing, and entertaining collection of essays drawn from the author’s own life. With deep feeling and sharp insight, Pollitt writes about the death of her father; the sad but noble final days of a leftist study group of which she was a member; and the betrayal and heartbreak inflicted by a man who seriously deceived her. (Her infinitely patient, gentle driving instructor points out her weakness—“Observation, Katha, observation!”) She also offers a candid view of her preoccupation with her ex-lover’s haunting presence on the Internet, and her search there for a secret link that might provide a revelation about him that will Explain Everything. Other topics include the differences between women and men—“More than half the male members of the Donner party died of cold and starvation, but three quarters of the females survived, saved by that extra layer of fat we spend our lives trying to get rid of”—and the practical implications of political theory: “What if socialism—all that warmhearted folderol about community and solidarity and sharing was just an elaborate con job, a way for men to avoid supporting their kids?” Learning to Drive demonstrates that while Katha Pollitt is undeniably one of our era’s most profound observers of culture, society, and politics, she is just as impressively a wise, graceful, and honest observer of her own and others’ human nature. Praise for Learning to Drive “The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.”—Chicago Tribune “A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.”—The New York Review of Books “With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being fifty-something: the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.”—The Seattle Times “Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessions tonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.”—Booklist (starred review)