Bernhard Rieger is Professor of European History at the University of Leiden.
[An] illuminating and elegantly written history… Rieger is
particularly good on the gendered nature of Beetle ownership. At a
time when fewer than 20 percent of driving licenses in West Germany
were held by women, the Beetle became a vehicle for what he calls
‘automotive misogyny.’ …He is very good…on its appeal in the United
States, where it became a popular second car for many families in
the expanding suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s… It even became an
icon of the counterculture.
*London Review of Books*
Bernhard Rieger’s The People’s Car conveys how inextricably
20th-century politics, culture and economics are linked… The story
of ‘the people’s car’ is, of course, interesting in its own
right—its commission, design, post-war production and worldwide
success. But what is most intriguing is how a consumer commodity
became an icon that, over decades, represented something different
for a variety of countries and generations. Rieger shows this to
informative and illuminating effect.
*Times Higher Education*
The People’s Car by Bernhard Rieger chronicles the life of the
iconic Volkswagen Beetle, from its 1930s origin as a propaganda
tool for Germany’s Third Reich through to the modern day, a run of
popularity spanning a remarkable nine decades. Rieger’s research
details the car maker’s obsessive pursuit for high-quality,
low-maintenance and utterly dependable motoring, which were the
treasured hallmarks of the Beetle through the middle part of the
20th century… While the meteoric postwar rise of the Beetle
presents a chance to marvel at the model’s simple appeal and
outstanding longevity, the years before its manufacture began
present the most fascinating reading… The People’s Car is an
exhaustive…and fascinating glimpse at a car that stood the test of
time and of changing consumer tastes.
*Sydney Morning Herald*
Bernhard Rieger tells the story of the Beetle and he does so with
wit and ease… A German chronicle that always keeps an eye on
international entanglements. [Rieger’s] cultural history with a
transnational reach is…the intelligent alternative to traditional
national historiography.
*Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung*
An engaging history of how a failed Nazi prestige project became a
national icon in three different countries… A provocative look at
one product’s unlikely journey through authoritarianism and
globalization.
*Foreign Policy online*
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 its Third
Reich conception to lovable international representation of a
renewed Germany is sure to interest die-hard Beetle lovers as well
as automobile history buffs.
*Library Journal (starred review)*
The Beetle had a stupendous run, which…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 made of steel, glass, and plastic
that was designed in the heart of Hitler’s Reich.
*The National*
The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle is a
thorough and compelling new chronicle of the distinctive Bug.
*Fast Company online*
The story of the Volkswagen Beetle is complex, interesting,
international, unlikely, and utterly fascinating. Rieger does an
excellent job of bringing together the history, events, and people
that produced an iconic automobile that beat all the odds.
*Choice*
Rieger has succeeded in presenting the first comprehensive account
of the truly amazing story of the Volkswagen Beetle. Starting with
Hitler’s plans to provide a mass-produced people’s car for his
projected ‘Aryan’ society, he shows how this ‘ugly duckling’ became
an icon of postwar mass motorization around the world. A compelling
read.
*V. R. Berghahn, Columbia University*
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, coeditor of Concentration Camps in Germany: The
New Histories*
With great richness and imagination, Rieger joins economics and
social desire, advertising and politics, technology and culture, to
track a distinctive German history through a truly transnational
arena.
*Geoff Eley, author of Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology,
and the Ground of Consent in Germany, 1930–1945*
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*
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