Highways to Heaven: The Auto Biography of America

by Christopher Finch

A chronicle of the automobile from the early days of the "horseless carriage" to the present explores human beings' attraction to, obsession with, and development of the automobile, discussing form, style, innovation, and more. $25,000 ad/promo.

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Christopher Finch was born in Guernsey in the British Channel Islands, and now lives in Los Angeles. He is an artist and a photographer who has had one person shows in New York and California, and he is the author of almost thirty non-fiction books including the best sellers Rainbow: the Stormy Life of Judy Garland, The Art of Walt Disney, Jim Henson: the Works, and Norman Rockwell's America. Recently he has embarked on a series of noir-inflected mystery novels set in New York in the late 1960s and featuring the private investigator Alex Novalis. The first of these, Good Girl, Bad Girl, is to be published by Thomas & Mercer in 2013. These books draw on his own experiences in the New York art world at a time when today's SoHo was an urban wilderness with rats frolicking in the gutters and artists eking out a living in barren loft spaces. He is married to Linda Rosenkrantz, an author and a co-founder of the website Nameberry.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid history, easily readable, but with juuuuuuuust a few too many generalizations. But what a unique look at 20th century history. Want to know the answer to the 120 year-old question "Why do we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway?" It's in here.