The most recommended books books about cars

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13 authors created a book list connected to cars, and here are their favorite car books.
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Book cover of Freeway Fighter

Jason Jowett Author Of Alchemy Series Compendium

From my list on inspiring sci-fi that reforges your worldview.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an avid explorer having thrice traveled around the world, living and working in over 40 countries, my inspirations as so originally science fiction have found grounding. I looked to level my imagination in the real world and filtered out the impossible from the unnecessary on a path to utopia. Sharing our ideas, exposing misgivings too, all contribute to a shared realization of human potential. This is much of the reason for who I am as a founder of business platforms I designed to achieve things that I envisage as helpful, necessary, and constructive contributions to our world. Those software endeavours underway in 2022, and a longtime coming still, are Horoscorpio and De Democracy.

Jason's book list on inspiring sci-fi that reforges your worldview

Jason Jowett Why did Jason love this book?

Ever wondered if you'd survive in the Mad Max universe? Here's the assurance you can, well maybe if you've loaded die. Choose your own adventure has been a staple literary source of my youth and Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson are both united champions of the genre. Freeway Fighter is one of their few which lends more to science than fantasy, and is thoroughly invigorating. For mind-bending characterization, here you've got the original immersion you need in self-discovery.

By Andi Ewington, Simon Coleby (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freeway Fighter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The smash-hit Fighting Fantasy gamebook comes to comics for the very first time, in a brand-new story of post-apocalyptic racing and survival against all odds! Bella De La Rosa was heir to a great I-400 racing tradition before the virus hit, before most of humanity was wiped out, and civilization fell. Eighteen months after the collapse of society, she and her blue and red Interceptor prowl the remnants of what once was America, eking out a life among the ruins, trying to evade vicious car gangs like the Doom Dogs, and find enough gas, food, and water to survive. But…


Book cover of Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places

Brian Ladd Author Of The Streets of Europe: The Sights, Sounds, and Smells That Shaped Its Great Cities

From Brian's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historian Urbanist City walker

Brian's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Brian Ladd Why did Brian love this book?

I thought I knew this stuff: what’s wrong with our inhospitable city streets and how great designers like Jeff Speck can make them better if given a chance.

But he packages the diagnoses and solutions so succinctly here: all the things a town can do to transform its streets from inhospitable auto sewers to places worth lingering, even while we improve movement for pedestrians and bicyclists but also for motorists.

By Jeff Speck,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Walkable City Rules as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nearly every US city would like to be more walkable-for reasons of health, wealth, and the environment-yet few are
taking the proper steps to get there. The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck's follow up to his
bestselling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City
Rules is a doer's guide to making change in cities, and making it now.

The 101 rules are practical yet engaging-worded for arguments at the planning commission, illustrated for clarity, and
packed with specifications as…


Book cover of Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century

Roberta Brandes Gratz Author Of The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs

From my list on authentic urbanism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was an award-winning New York City newspaper reporter who developed a perspective on how to understand cities from the bottom up, not from the top down, of planners and politicians. I am now a well-known expert on urbanism and speak all over the world on the subject.   

Roberta's book list on authentic urbanism

Roberta Brandes Gratz Why did Roberta love this book?

This book, more than any other, helps us understand how the US lost its efficient and widespread rail network and became totally reliant on cars both in cities, between cities, and throughout the country. It illustrates why the mass transit landscape of our country looks and functions the way it does.

Most people today do not understand the elaborate and efficient mass transit system we had that was destroyed and how countrywide transit was purposely and needlessly destroyed to create dependency on the car. One can't help being envious when visiting a European nation—or even Tokyo—where expansive transit systems make car dependency unnecessary.

By Stephen B. Goddard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Getting There as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Explains why automobiles replaced the train as the primary means of transportation, discusses the social impact of the automobile, and looks at the future of transportation


Book cover of Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement

Greg Gordon Author Of When Money Grew on Trees: A. B. Hammond and the Age of the Timber Baron

From my list on environmental history and who speaks for the trees.

Why am I passionate about this?

The natural world has been my solace and passion for my entire life. I also suffer from an insatiable curiosity as to how it came to be. While I am fascinated by natural history, my deficient math and analytical skills precluded a career in science, and so I turned to environmental history to explore how humans and nature have interacted over time.

Greg's book list on environmental history and who speaks for the trees

Greg Gordon Why did Greg love this book?

This really reshaped my thinking about Wilderness. I’d always thought that the main idea of Wilderness was to preserve a pristine environment, but Paul Sutter shows that the origins of the Wilderness movement were focused on getting away from cars—that the wilderness movement was more about providing a place to escape from modernity than preserving the ecosystem. 

By Paul S. Sutter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Driven Wild as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In its infancy, the movement to protect wilderness areas in the United States was motivated less by perceived threats from industrial and agricultural activities than by concern over the impacts of automobile owners seeking recreational opportunities in wild areas. Countless commercial and government purveyors vigorously promoted the mystique of travel to breathtakingly scenic places, and roads and highways were built to facilitate such travel. By the early 1930s, New Deal public works programs brought these trends to a startling crescendo. The dilemma faced by stewards of the nation's public lands was how to protect the wild qualities of those places…


Book cover of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City

Marco te Brömmelstroet Author Of Movement: how to take back our streets and transform our lives

From my list on how your language shapes the way you think (and act).

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor in Urban Mobility Futures and, as such, am fascinated by how we think about our mobility present and past and how this limits us in imagining different futures. The problems in our mobility system are so urgent and overwhelming that I like to actively search for alternative ways of seeing and acting and teach others to do the same. Personally, I love to experience the incredible freedom of mind that I find in doing this. Also, see the Shepherd list of recommendations by my co-author, Thalia Verkade.

Marco's book list on how your language shapes the way you think (and act)

Marco te Brömmelstroet Why did Marco love this book?

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that our streets have been designed through a process of simplification. I did not realize that this all started in the 1920s with the advent of the mass-produced automobile.

The first ‘traffic engineers’ came from water management, and because of that, our streets have become pipelines that should never be clogged! Mind = blown! All this made a lot of sense a hundred years ago, but does it still today? Or should we take this newfound freedom to create new languages to think about and design our streets?

By Peter D. Norton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fighting Traffic as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The fight for the future of the city street between pedestrians, street railways, and promoters of the automobile between 1915 and 1930.

Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its…


Book cover of If I Built a Car

Wendy Kenny Author Of Sik-Sik's Summer: An Arctic Ground Squirrel Tale

From my list on reads to your kids that you'll also enjoy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have loved reading my whole life. So when I became a mom, I started reading to my kids pretty much as soon as they came home from the hospital. They absolutely love to have books read to them, and we have shelves full of picture books. My favorite picture books to read out loud are ones with eye-catching illustrations, witty stories that spark imagination or learning, and rhymes that flow rhythmically. As a bonus, if the characters lend themselves to fun voices, those are always winners. I hope you enjoy reading these books to your kids as much as I do.

Wendy's book list on reads to your kids that you'll also enjoy

Wendy Kenny Why did Wendy love this book?

If I Built a Car is one of my all-time favorites.

Honestly, I read it to myself just for the fun of it. But every child I read it to loves it as well.

Chris Van Dusen (my all-time favorite illustrator) hits all the marks of a great picture book: wonderfully imaginative, absolutely beautiful retro 50’s style artwork, and his rhyming text has such perfect rhythmic timing.

It’s a joy to read, and each page is so full of hidden wonders. After you read this one, you will definitely want to check out his other “If I Built” books and see what a house and a school could be like with a little, or a lot, of creativity.

By Chris Van Dusen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked If I Built a Car as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 3, 4, and 5.

What is this book about?

If I built a car, it'd be totally new!

Here are a few of the things that I'd do. . . .

Young Jack is giving an eye-opening tour of the car he'd like to build. There's a snack bar, a pool, and even a robot named Robert to act as chauffeur. With Jack's soaring imagination in the driver's seat, we're deep-sea diving one minute and flying high above traffic the next in this whimsical, tantalizing take on the car of the future. Illustrations packed with witty detail, bright colors, and chrome recall the fabulous fifties and an era of…


Book cover of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights

Anne Lutz Fernandez Author Of Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives

From my list on understanding America’s car system.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been interested in car culture since my anthropologist sister and I first began collaborating on a research and writing project on the topic over fifteen years ago. At that time, I had just moved from a transit-rich city to a car-dependent suburb and she had just moved from a suburb to a walkable city, which got us talking about just how much this singular object—the car—shaped our everyday lives. Carjacked was published in 2010, and since then I’ve continued to read and write about transportation, although I also write a lot about education—another obsession for another list of recommended books.  

Anne's book list on understanding America’s car system

Anne Lutz Fernandez Why did Anne love this book?

I first learned about this book from the PBS documentary that was based on it, and it is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the complex history of the automobile in America, a history rife with contradictions. Sorin highlights how the advent of the car provided Black Americans with great freedom and opportunity (including through its role in the civil rights movement) but also came with severe risks and restrictions. I especially appreciated how the author’s family history deepened the broader, national story. 

By Gretchen Sorin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Driving While Black as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Driving While Black demonstrates that the car-the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility-has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Melding new archival research with her family's story, Gretchen Sorin recovers a lost history, demonstrating how, when combined with black travel guides-including the famous Green Book-the automobile encouraged a new way of resisting oppression.


Book cover of Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars

John Wall Author Of Streamliner: Raymond Loewy and Image-making in the Age of American Industrial Design

From my list on explore American consumer culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an author and former journalist with a fascination with design and consumer culture. I’ve been writing about design and pop culture since completing an assignment on Jack Telnack’s Ford Taurus and Thunderbird designs for a national news magazine. My interest deepened when I moved to daily journalism and wrote about Raymond Loewy’s design for the S-1 Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive. When the newspaper industry began cratering in a blizzard of mergers, buyouts, and bad management, I spent 25 years working in media relations at Penn State and Juniata College. I looked for an involving side project as a respite from writing professorial profiles and found safe haven with the life and legacy of Raymond Loewy. 

John's book list on explore American consumer culture

John Wall Why did John love this book?

Examining automobiles people buy offers, if not a window into their soul, then a peek into their personal values. Ingrassia, a Wall Street Journal automotive reporter, guides us down a freeway of history and consumerism that “begat the middle class, the suburbs, shopping malls, McDonald's, Taco Bell, drive-through banking and other things.” He traces our romance with tires, horsepower, and wood-trimmed interiors through 15 models ranging from the Model T to the Prius. As stories of the Corvette, Jeep, GTO, VW Beetle and VWMicrobus, the unfairly maligned Chevy Corvair, and others roll by, Ingrassia integrates how each successive model forever changed customer desires and the often-cramped minds of auto executives. His cruise-control writing style rewards us with a smooth journey among the cars of our dreams.

By Paul Ingrassia,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Engines of Change as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Ingrassia comes a narrative of America like no other: a cultural history that explores how cars have both propelled and reflected the national experience—from the Model T to the Prius.

A narrative like no other: a cultural history that explores how cars have both propelled and reflected the American experience— from the Model T to the Prius.

From the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, from the lore of Jack Kerouac to the sex appeal of the Hot Rod, America’s history is a vehicular history—an idea brought brilliantly to…


Book cover of The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc

Sean Eedy Author Of Four-Color Communism: Comic Books and Contested Power in the German Democratic Republic

From my list on everyday life and politics in the Soviet Bloc.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of modern European history. But before that, my first loves were Star Wars, heavy metal, and comic books. When I started my degree, it only made sense to combine my love of popular culture with my academic interest in the Soviet Bloc states. Cultural history and the history of everyday life, examining the world through cars, comics, film, food, music, or whatever, provide us with a lens through which to see how people understood themselves and came to terms with the society around them, and for my work, to understand how those living under dictatorship resisted and carved out their own niche within a police state.

Sean's book list on everyday life and politics in the Soviet Bloc

Sean Eedy Why did Sean love this book?

I love books that explore the Soviet Bloc through its development of consumer culture. Much as they were in the West, in the East, cars were symbolic of progress and modernity. Unlike the West, production and distribution problems created a car culture focused on access. 

Still, the regimes struggled to control the excesses of consumer impulse more than they did the abuses of authority. This volume is fascinating as it asserts that the Soviet Bloc states were consumer-driven societies, given the same desires and demands as the West, despite their communist ideology.

Cars were political, and acquiring one may demand demonstrations of loyalty to the system. On the other hand, owning a car allowed for a perceived freedom from the regime, socialism, and social norms.

By Lewis H. Siegelbaum (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Socialist Car as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Across the Soviet Bloc, from the 1960s until the collapse of communism, the automobile exemplified the tension between the ideological imperatives of political authorities and the aspirations of ordinary citizens. For the latter, the automobile was the ticket to personal freedom and a piece of the imagined consumer paradise of the West. For the authorities, the personal car was a private, mobile space that challenged the most basic assumptions of the collectivity. The "socialist car"-and the car culture that built up around it-was the result of an always unstable compromise between official ideology, available resources, and the desires of an…


Book cover of Death at Devil's Bridge

Jeanne M. Dams Author Of Murder in the Park

From my list on historical mysteries that make the period come alive.

Why am I passionate about this?

I used to hate history, until I made the startling discovery that history wasn’t about dates and wars—the stuff we had to memorize in high school—but about people. And what can be more absorbing than people? When I started my first historical series, set in the very early 20th century in my hometown of South Bend, Indiana, I delved into the local newspaper and learned that the people of the time and their problems were very much like today’s. That pulled me in, and never let go. Now, researching the 1920s, I’m meeting people who might live next door. It’s so much fun!

Jeanne's book list on historical mysteries that make the period come alive

Jeanne M. Dams Why did Jeanne love this book?

I dearly loved the Robin Paige books and was so sorry when Susan and Bill Albert (the authors behind the pseudonym) stopped writing them.

These books were always entertaining and always provided me with a place where I wanted to live for a while with people I wanted to know.

Real people were always creeping into the story, in this case Messrs. Rolls and Royce, in a fictional account of their first meeting. So redolent of the time, late 1800s, and the place, coziest England.

A little witchcraft, a balloon race, an automobile race featuring a steamer, an electric, and a gasoline-powered auto—what could be more atmospheric, more fun, or more conducive of a fascinating murder?

By Robin Paige,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Death at Devil's Bridge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Newlyweds Charles and Kate Sheridan have moved into Kate's ancestral Georgian home Bishop's Keep, where Kate plans to devote herself to her writing and Charles to the responsibilities of the landed gentry. He agrees to host an automobile exhibition and balloon race at Bishop's Keep attended by Europe's foremost investors and inventors, among them the young Mr. Charles Rolls and Henry Royce.

But speed, competition, and money prove to be more explosive than gasoline - and for one automobile builder, more deadly....


Book cover of Freeway Fighter
Book cover of Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places
Book cover of Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century

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