The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction: Winner 2004

Judges report

Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities by Graeme Davison (Allen & Unwin)

Car Wars, by Australia’s most imaginative social historian, Graeme Davison, is not simply about cars, nor is its meaning limited to its Melbourne context. Davison draws on a wealth of material to construct a history from the driver’s seat, showing how the car has shaped not only the topography of a city but also the social and working lives, the culture, of its inhabitants, in ways that are simultaneously liberating and constraining. Intricately woven, it is also wry and appealing-the kind of book that makes one ask why we have had to wait until now for the car to attract the sustained attention of one of our major historians. Davison’s Car Wars distils years of research in administrative archives and a wide range of popular culture sources, but wears its considerable scholarship lightly. The writer is as at home in the cabin of a mid-20th century Chev ute as he is analysing the intricacies of BOOT funding or chronicling the campaigns to halt carnage on Australian roads. This is a rich and entertaining study of the way we lived then and the way we live now.