Pioneers, Engineers and Scoundrels by Beverly Rae Kimes - Book Report/Review Example

Pioneers, Engineers and Scoundrels by Beverly Rae Kimes In this paper it is necessary to talk about the book Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America written by Beverly Rae Kimes, and express own general reactions, basing on the main points of the book. At the beginning it can be seen that the book Pioneers, Engineers and Scoundrels by Beverly Rae Kimes has a fantastic success with the crowds who like automobiles and are interested in this sphere. Describing the book in few words, it is possible to say that the book conveys readers back into the 1920s and makes them witnesses of the automobile industry development.

Moreover, the author has written her book covering a big variety of details that can be very interesting even for car-educated readers, because Beverly Rae Kimes not only describes well-known and popular in contemporary world cars and American automobile industry’s names, such as Ford, Dodge, Buick and others, but she also connects popular brands with less popular ones, introducing snapshots of lesser famous, but vitally important ‘characters’ of American automobile world. It is necessary to add that even a reader who knows the history of the automobile industry will find interesting details in Kimes’ book.

Each year the world produced more than one dozen new models. Some of them became good ‘workhorses’, but some put the global automotive industry to a new stage of its development. Addressing to contemporary reality, the book Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels demonstrates the way how people invent an automobile and the way how it changes our life. Nowadays, it is even impossible to imagine that people could not image such a possibility to use automobiles in everyday life some years ago. They even did not know the word ‘automobile’ and used horses or other devices to go somewhere.

Kimes, being a specialist in her area and writing about automobile history for more than four decades, decided to create her book for the purpose of telling people true stories about genuine inventions, presenting events in a chronologic order. Dwelling on the main points of the book we should mention that horse-drawn harnesses were quite successfully used in the world before the advent of the automobile. With the help of coaches, wagons and stagecoaches people quite successfully delivered mail, bank facilities and, finally, the passengers over the centuries.

Depending on the purpose and distance of travel in a coach or carriage were harnessed two or four pairs of horses, which provided unthinkable powers at the time. Then the author shows that as time went on, the dawn of the scientific and technical revolution took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. People’s minds are more and more becoming departed from the old stereotypes. Then the unseen mechanisms that can replace the work of many people have appeared. Thus, it was the beginning of technical revolution in the automobile industry.

It is important to mention that the first cars were not so safe as now – there were different situations in which people were killed, and it became a starting point for a proclamation of a specific hunt for these ‘monsters’. Even the fact that the first cars were available only to very wealthy people, and thus were protected, respectively, did not save automobiles from vandal actions making them an object of various destroying acts. Basing on the book it becomes obvious that exactly in America, where a rate of technological progress reached the highest rate at the time, the automobile production went up sharply from the use of the latest technological inventions.

However, there was a downside - very big injuries in the interaction between a man and a machine, as well as a huge number of unemployed, who at one point found themselves on the street due to the fact that the work of several hundred people began to successfully implement by a progressive mechanism. Initially, all this has led to a sharply negative attitude of a majority of people to new, effective mechanisms, and numerous skirmishes of people and cars, which often ended with very grim outcomes for both sides.

To sum up, taking everything into consideration it is possible to conclude that the book Pioneers, Engineers and Scoundrels by Beverly Rae Kimes gives people an opportunity to be involved in the process of American automobile industry development. The author brightly demonstrates that the situation has changed dramatically with the advent of diesel fuel - this kind of the energy mix has made the mass production of automobiles possible. And soon the cars have occupied their rightful position, which they have successfully held on for a century!

Works cited: Kimes, Beverly R. Pioneers, Engineers, And Scoundrels: The Dawn Of The Automobile In America. SAE International, 2004.