| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Horse Trading in the Age of Cars: Men in the Marketplace. By Steven M. Gelber. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. xiv, 224 pp. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8018-8997-4.)

In Horse Trading in the Age of Cars, Steven M. Gelber examines why Americans buy cars by haggling over trade-ins, prices, and features. The puzzle for Gelber is why that practice continues despite "the express desire of both the public and the industry to have automotive retailing conform to general retail standards" (p. 3), by which he means fixed, advertised prices. He believes these prices are democratic because the same price applies to all consumers. Gelber argues that car buying is the continuation of the gendered practices of horse trading, which have persisted because both horses and cars express the "cultural constructed meaning of manhood" (p. 174). Horse trading was an elaborate male contest of outwitting one's opponent with deception and lies. Carried over into car buying, it created a retail experience that excluded American women "for whom aggressive bargaining had become an alien process" (p. 163).

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