Carapace: The Motor Car in New Zealand: A Roadside View. By M.H. HOLCROFT

Hardcover, very good condition. Dust jacket scuffed and chipped edges, covers are shelf worn. Publisher: John McIndoe 1979

Scarcely anybody now asks if motor cars are really necessary, but a few people still mange to live without owning or driving them. Monte Holcroft admits that this apartness can be a form of second-class citizenship. But he is not sure that a first-class life (or what is taken to be one in our mobile society) is worth having. He has been thinking about motor cars, and what they are doing to us - as well as for us - since he wrote a chapter on the subject in his prize-winning essay, The Deepening Stream, published in 1940. The motoring revolution had not then begun the giant acceleration which has changed the world and all our lives. But changes and problems were beginning to show themselves. Holcroft now looks at New Zealand in what he sees as the climax of the motoring age. He studies its effects: the overbearing presence of vehicles, the economic consequences of universal car-ownership, the takeover of roads and land, the erosion of beaches and countryside, the loosening of family life and its social consequences, and changes in the New Zealand character. He writes as an essayist. His wider theme is life in New Zealand in the 20th century, and he brings to it the qualities of thought and style which have given him a separate and special place in New Zealand writing. The growth of motoring has been recorded by cameras, and full use was made of photographic archives to illustrate the text. Earlier photographs have the charm of vintage years, and the selection as a whole has a strong documentary interest

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