In Engines of Change, Paul Ingrassia offers “a history of modern America in fifteen cars.” Each chapter examines how a particular piece of sheet metal and rubber helped to shape an era. He expects that you’ll quibble with his list—there’s no ’57 Chevy Bel Air, no mid-‘70s Gremlin—but don’t question the worthiness of the project itself. “As far as I know,” he said recently, “no one writes songs about computers.”