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A revisionist, provocative history of the downfall of the American auto industry from the widely praised author of Herbert Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times.
In the mid 1960s, a young Ralph Nader provided key evidence at a Senate hearing on auto safety. His testimony, along with his best-selling book Unsafe at Any Speed, shocked the nation with its revelations of an industry that knowingly sacrificed safety for profit. The final nail in the coffin came with the news that the auto companies had hired private investigators to dig up dirt on Nader's private life. The impact of these hearings was profound: Nader is credited today with inspiring a wave of regulation that has protected consumers for more than half a century.
But now, in The Sack of Detroit, we see that this familiar story is almost entirely false. The author reveals how Nader and his Senate allies routinely ignored or downplayed conflicting evidence, and that the regulations he fought for would ultimately cost more lives over the next few decades than they saved. And he makes clear as well that though some of the damage to the auto industry was self-inflicted, there was no undoing it: Americans' trust in the business community would never recover. This is a riveting narrative of the clash between Nader, members of the Senate including Robert Kennedy, and the titans of the auto industry-an eye-opening history that not only upends decades of conventional wisdom, but also poses difficult questions about government, business, and the decline of American manufacturing.
In the mid 1960s, a young Ralph Nader provided key evidence at a Senate hearing on auto safety. His testimony, along with his best-selling book Unsafe at Any Speed, shocked the nation with its revelations of an industry that knowingly sacrificed safety for profit. The final nail in the coffin came with the news that the auto companies had hired private investigators to dig up dirt on Nader's private life. The impact of these hearings was profound: Nader is credited today with inspiring a wave of regulation that has protected consumers for more than half a century.
But now, in The Sack of Detroit, we see that this familiar story is almost entirely false. The author reveals how Nader and his Senate allies routinely ignored or downplayed conflicting evidence, and that the regulations he fought for would ultimately cost more lives over the next few decades than they saved. And he makes clear as well that though some of the damage to the auto industry was self-inflicted, there was no undoing it: Americans' trust in the business community would never recover. This is a riveting narrative of the clash between Nader, members of the Senate including Robert Kennedy, and the titans of the auto industry-an eye-opening history that not only upends decades of conventional wisdom, but also poses difficult questions about government, business, and the decline of American manufacturing.