Scan­dal always cap­ti­vates, and the VW news cap­ti­vat­ed Amer­i­cans for months — even those Amer­i­cans who usu­al­ly skip past the auto­mo­bile sec­tion. Reporters like Ewing pub­lished updates near­ly every day. John Oliv­er even jumped aboard with a com­e­dy bit mock­ing the Ger­man lan­guage and end­ed with the line, ​“Hitler trust­ed us, why won’t you?” With the mar­ket pre­pared, Faster, High­er, Far­ther has been pub­lished simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in Eng­lish and Ger­man, and the author has been appear­ing on the morn­ing shows to talk cor­po­rate scan­dal. Leonar­do DiCaprio bought the movie rights.

Imag­ine the val­ue of a car that, thanks to an exclu­sive mul­ti-year part­ner­ship, autonomous­ly dri­ves past Dunkin’ Donuts and heads straight for Star­bucks when you say, ​“Leaf, get me a cof­fee.” Or, a car in which Nis­san Pay replaces Sam­sung Pay or Apple Pay and takes a piece of the action.

How the high­way destroyed the city in order to save it. Excerpt­ed from City by City: Dis­patch­es from the Amer­i­can Metrop­o­lis ed. Kei­th Gessen and Stephen Squibb.