The People's Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle - Rilegato

Rieger, Bernhard

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0674050916 ISBN 13: 9780674050914

Casa editrice: Harvard Univ Pr, 2013

Riassunto

At the Berlin Auto Show in 1938, Adolf Hitler presented the prototype for a small, oddly shaped, inexpensive family car that all good Aryans could enjoy. Decades later, that automobile-the Volkswagen Beetle-was one of the most beloved in the world. Bernhard Rieger examines culture and technology, politics and economics, and industrial design and advertising genius to reveal how a car commissioned by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche became an exceptional global commodity on a par with Coca-Cola.

Beyond its quality and low cost, the Beetle's success hinged on its uncanny ability to capture the imaginations of people across nations and cultures. In West Germany, it came to stand for the postwar "economic miracle" and helped propel Europe into the age of mass motorization. In the United States, it was embraced in the suburbs, and then prized by the hippie counterculture as an antidote to suburban conformity. As its popularity waned in the First World, the Beetle crawled across Mexico and Latin America, where it symbolized a sturdy toughness necessary to thrive amid economic instability.

Drawing from a wealth of sources in multiple languages, The People's Car presents an international cast of characters-executives and engineers, journalists and advertisers, assembly line workers and car collectors, and everyday drivers-who made the Beetle into a global icon. The Beetle's improbable story as a failed prestige project of the Third Reich which became a world-renowned brand illuminates the multiple origins, creative adaptations, and persisting inequalities that characterized twentieth-century globalization.

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Recensione:

"Rieger extracts from the history of the Volkswagen not just the story of a product--iconic though it was--but also its significance for Germany's national image since the 1930s. Deeply researched, this history makes a cracking good read." --Jane Caplan, Co-Editor of Concentration Camps In Germany: The New Histories

"A fascinating book! Rieger takes readers on the Volkswagen Beetle's global journey, showing the many meanings of this iconic product in different times and places. His history illuminates the worldwide allure of commodity culture, the spread of socioeconomic inequalities, and the protean meanings of purchased goods." --Emily S. Rosenberg, editor of A World Connecting, 1870-1945

"The Beetle had a stupendous run, which the British academic Bernhard Rieger traces in his absorbing account [...] Rieger has written a fascinating book that will inevitably find resonance among those who were themselves touched by the magic of an object man of steel, glass, and plastic that was designed in the heart of Hitler's Reich." --Paul Hockenos, The National, 9/05/2013

"From its original design by Ferdinand Porsche, commissioned by Hitler in the 1930s, to its role as a symbol of a new, post-World War II Germany, the beetle became second only to Ford's model T as a car for the masses and, eventually, a feature of the emergence of the middle class...This overview of the car's journey from the Third Reich conception to lovable international representation of a renewed Germany is sure to interest die-hard Beetle lovers as well as automobile history buff." --Maria Bagshaw, Library Journal (starred review)

L'autore:

Bernhard Rieger teaches modern and contemporary history at University College London.

Author's home: London, UNITED KINGDOM

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harvard Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0674050916
• ISBN 13: 9780674050914
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 406