In “Carmageddon,” Daniel Knowles outlines the rise of the automobile and the costs we all bear as a result. 

Knowles traces the forces and decisions that normalized cars and cemented our reliance on them. 

He takes readers around the world to show the ways car use has impacted people’s lives—from Nairobi, where few people own a car but the city is still cloaked in smog, to Hou ston, where the Katy Freeway has a mind-boggling 26 lanes. 

With these negatives, Knowles shows that there are better ways to live.