As a tool of globalized mobility, the car provides a useful barometer for charting the global development of socio-cultural, economic, technical, and political modernization. Shaped by prevailing gender and racial norms and popularized by a Western-driven car culture, it is a commodity whose access and use embodies wider inequalities. In this comprehensive world history of (auto)mobility, Gijs Mom draws upon his extensive research into the field to assess the past and present of road cultures, and hypothesize their future. Ranging from the impact of climate change to decolonization, this volume spotlights how profoundly 'automobilism' impacts our sense of identity and imagination.

Gijs Mom is Associate Professor Emeritus at Eindhoven University of Technology, specializing in the history of mobility. He is the author of Atlantic Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2015), Globalizing Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2020), and Pacific Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2022). He was a co-editor, with Georgine Clarsen and Mimi Sheller, of the Berghahn Books series "Explorations in Mobility," and the founder and first editor of Transfers, Interdisciplinary Journal of New Mobility Studies.