About the Author

Bryan Appleyard was educated at King's College, Cambridge. He was Financial News Editor and Deputy Arts Editor at The Times of London and has subsequently written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Spectator, and the New Statesman. He has been Feature Writer of the Year three times at the British Press Awards. In the 2019, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire for services to the arts and journalism. He lives in England.

Reviews

"The Car: The Rise and Fall of the Machine That Made the Modern World is an encyclopedic retrospective of how the car came to be, how it has evolved over the past century and how, as the subtitle suggests, it has shaped the world we live in."-- "Wall Street Journal"
"A delightfully meandering romp through key milestones in the development of the automobile, and the repercussions that it has wrought--both amazing and horrific."-- "Car and Driver Magazine"
"An entertaining and superbly researched story about the industrial age's most astonishing and enchanting creation."-- "Gavin Green, Car Magazine"
"As cars undergo their latest electro-smart evolution, Bryan Appleyard's extraordinary cultural history of them explains how they changed our everyday experience. This is a brilliantly written and thoughtful account of the machines that made our lives recognizably modern."--Michael Burleigh, author of Day of the Assassins and Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics
"Bryan Appleyard has written an important account of automotive history. This book is beautifully restrained, yet manages to communicate a wealth of fascinating information."--Jonathan Kellerman "The New York Times Book Review"
"Bryan Appleyard is well known to readers as a thoughtful interpreter of our frets and anxieties... a thinking man's Clarkson."

-- "The Spectator (UK)"

"The car has totally changed our society. Bryan Appleyard is just the writer to get to the heart of this phenomenon."--Melvyn Bragg, host of BBC Radio 4's "In Our Time
"This engaging history of the motor car is full of rich anecdotes and detail."

-- "The Sunday Times"

"This fond look at the history, development and significance of the automobile is supercharged by wonderful writing... As sharply as he draws portraits of the key players, Appleyard, one of the liveliest minds in journalism, is at his most acute when musing on the cultural effects of the car."

-- "The Observer"

"Very few people could do justice to this extraordinary story--and with this book Bryan Appleyard sets the bar impossibly high for anyone else."--Rory Sutherland, author of Transport for Humans and Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don't Make Sense