Volume 21, Number 7 · May 2, 1974
Morality Play
By Richard J. Barnet
Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age
by Emma Rothschild
Random House, 264 pp., $6.95
Emma Rothschild's fascinating study of the 'decline of the auto-industrial age' tells us more about the peculiar plans of the auto industry and how they have gone awry than any other account of America's fading love affair with the car. One could write a social history of the United States around the auto industry, for it has not only transformed the countryside and the cities but also our basic national attitudes about work, leisure, and the pursuit of happiness. Ms. Rothschild has not attempted this but she has written a well-researched morality play which shows with painful clarity why all the crises we associate with the car arose and why the US auto giants are incapable of resolving them.
Review, 2370 words
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