Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile

The Volkswagon Bug-so named for its outline, its droning engine and its ""insectlike ubiquitousness""-is no simple car, argues Patton in this entertaining history: it is ""a shape, a set of ideas-and a selfish meme"" (the term zoologist Richard Dawkins coined to describe the cultural equivalent of a selfish gene). After chronicling the minutia of American life in Made in USA: The Secret Histories of the Things That Made America, Patton turns his sharp-eyed gaze to the VW Beetle's improbable journey from Third Reich dream to Disney's cute Herbie the Love Bug to Silicon Valley status symbol. Pulling material from obscure books, films and songs, he shows how the story of the Bug is essentially the postmodern dream of the West in the 20th century. Today's Bug, Patton argues, is a synthesis of such unrelated events as Ford's assembly line, Hitler's attempted conquest of Russia, pre-war German union intrigue, the rebuilding of postwar Germany, U.S.-Japanese car wars, 1960's counterculture and the brilliant manipulations of the American marketing machine-making the car an enduring cultural icon and an idea that refuses to die. 8 pages of b&w photos.