Rating: 
Summary: Big on problems, small on solutions
Review: "Asphalt Nation" talks about the damage the automobile has done to society, but very little on how "we could take it back".
It gets very detailed on how cars, and how public policy encouraged more auto use, had a detriment on society.
Looking for answers, I found very few. Note that the author is an architecture critic, and she could have at least gone into detail on how to construct pedestrian-friendly architecture, which in turn is beneficial to bicycle and public transit usage.
Rating: 
Summary: America's Carculture Exposed
Review:
Who can imagine life without cars? Author Jane Holtz Kay recounts the
history of the automobile starting from when it was a rare novelty at
the beginning of this century. Back then, it promised a bright new
future of freedom and mobility. Kay shows, however, how the servant
became the master. As a new century approaches, we are increasingly stuck in traffic
and only beginning to count the costs of accommodating cars at the
expense of all else. You will be surprised to read about how
far-reaching and profound the impacts of our auto-dependency are--and
realize even more strongly the need for balance. Sparing no detail, Kay
paints a sobering picture of mounting congestion, worsening pollution,
and widening isolation caused by our heavy-handed grip on the steering
wheel. She also portrays the prospect of a more sustainable future--one
in which the car has its place but does not dominate our lives. You
will learn about efforts in communities around the country that show how
bringing about this balance dramatically improves quality of life. A must-read for all concerned with finding solutions to our transportation and social dilemmas!
Rating:
Summary: America's Carculture Exposed
Review:
Who can imagine life without cars? Author Jane Holtz Kay recounts thehistory of the automobile starting from when it was a rare novelty at the beginning of this century. Back then, it promised a bright new future of freedom and mobility. Kay shows, however, how the servant became the master. As a new century approaches, we are increasingly stuck in traffic and only beginning to count the costs of accommodating cars at the expense of all else. You will be surprised to read about how far-reaching and profound the impacts of our auto-dependency are--and realize even more strongly the need for balance. Sparing no detail, Kay paints a sobering picture of mounting congestion, worsening pollution, and widening isolation caused by our heavy-handed grip on the steering wheel. She also portrays the prospect of a more sustainable future--one in which the car has its place but does not dominate our lives. You will learn about efforts in communities around the country that show how bringing about this balance dramatically improves quality of life. A must-read for all concerned with finding solutions to our transportation and social dilemmas!
Rating:
Summary: Great idea, bad writing
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: compelling, enlightened, and enlightening
Review: An excellent book. Perhaps a little loose at points, and a little soft on details in the last section, Kay's work is nonetheless an effective prod for getting the reader to question a dominant, and ultimately destructive, American ideology. As someone who lives on a residential street commonly used as a sort of drag strip for SUV's, I found Kay's call to activism compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking, saddening, yet optomistic
Review: Asphalt Nation is wasted on any reader who would dismiss it as another disgruntled environmentalist diatribe. Aside from the obvious environmental issues of pollution and the consumption of natural resources described by the author, the more compelling sections of the book relate to the social costs of automobile dependency. Among these are the destruction of some of the nation's finest architecture in cities such as Boston and Detroit to make way for highwayws,roads and parking lots, the second class status assigned to public transportation, particularly railroads and subways which serve to break automobile dependency, and the lack of suitable space for pedestrians and bicyclists in cities and towns designed to accomodate the automobile and further dependency. The point is well made that the Amish reject the automobile not because the internal combustion engine is intrinsically evil, but that the automobile serves to break social ties and alienate fellow human beings - all one need do is to observe the typical American suburb to see this prophecy fulfilled. What we are left with in the end are "uglified" cities, congested roadways, lack of accessability for those who choose not to drive, and "carchitecture" (to steal a term from the book), that undifferentiated, generic, plastic looking architecture built along roadways, and also in residential subdivisions which serve the automobile. How many "environmental" issues have I mentioned? These are societal ills. The wanton destruction of our architectural heritage, the dumbing down of our aesthetic appreciation, the lack of societal ties, are the results of decades of poor social policy and the influence of the automobile industry's powerful lobby upon it. We are a nation that needs to preserve and protect our social and cultural heritage and identity.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a must read for all!
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: written after Asphalt Nation
Review: For those looking for postscripts: see author's summer articles in Sierra Magazine (no such thing as a 'clean car') and In These Times (car's contribution to global warming) or forthcoming articles on sprawl (The Nation) and brownfields (Preservation Magazine).
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't anyone proofread any more?
Review: I confess that I read only the first part of the book and thereafter skimmed through it. The reason: a book of this type, relying on statistics and facts, can't contain the number of errors I soon spotted and retain my interest. On page 20, the author writes, "half of all Americans own more than one car, one-third purchase a second car, and one-fifth own yet a third." That doesn't quite compute. On page 32, she writes that 78,000 miles equal "double [the journey] of astronaut Neil Armstrong . . . ." Not as long as the moon's mean distance from Earth remains approximately 238,900 miles. Then there are the typos: "in accessible" (p. 3); "Loma Pieta" (p. 46). The Loma Prieta earthquake occurred in 1989, not 1993 as she states. Enough! I sympathize with the author's argument. As a cyclist and a car owner in the San Francisco Bay Area, I frequently use my bike because it's faster. But it's hard to read a book when errors begin to crop up almost from the first page. The photos, however, are wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Illuminating , insightful and readable
Review: 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.
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