USA Today … Adam Penenberg, an investigative reporter who exposed a fabricated New Republic story by journalist Stephen Glass in 1998, has clearly done his own exhaustive reporting. He even boasts at the start: ‘All the characters and events depicted in these pages are real.’ So are the truths revealed in these pages. At times, you wish they weren’t. Penenberg meticulously marches the reader through a human and journalistic drama punctuated by deadly engineering flaws and corporate arrogance that resulted in lives being lost and ruined in the insatiable quest for profits. This is a book about one lawyer’s battle and one woman’s struggle for survival and justice as billed. But it is far deeper. These two stories intertwine to lead us through the blinding maze of suits and countersuits, whistle-blowers, politicians, consumer advocates, journalists, engineers and corporate executives. The only way out: Build safer cars. Penenberg invites you to feel the sweat, the exhaustion, the fear, the frustration and the pain of all concerned. That’s good storytelling, and Penenberg lands the details gracefully.
San Francisco Chronicle: In a swift, dramatic account, Penenberg unspins the convoluted political and legal history of the dangerous automotive pairing. Around Bailey’s 10-month odyssey–from the accident on March 10, 2000, to her $27 million settlements with Firestone and Ford in January 2001–he weaves the broader, disastrous stories of both car and tire, and of the various struggles to remove them from American roads. Penenberg tracks Ford’s Explorer stability problems back to a May 1987 engineers’ report; he digs back to the 1988 Bridgestone-Firestone merger–and a subsequent aggressive cost-cutting spree that reduced the amount of rubber in each tire–to find the root of the ATX and Wilderness tires’ fatal flaws. (Along the way, he accumulates an exhaustive, 29-page endnote section.) Penenberg fills the narrative with rich, detailed characters: safety advocates and car investigators, victims and executives, lawyers and journalists. … [H]owever, the real hero in Penenberg’s tale is not Bailey, the bed-bound victim whose case cracked the industry, but Turner, who comes off as a prince among sharp-toothed plaintiffs’ attorneys.
New York Law Journal: [Blood Highways is] a gripping story, and Penenberg tells it well, deftly weaving together the narratives of victims, lawyers and corporate officers alike … [His] comprehensive investigation into the SUV industry unearths problems that go beyond the Firestone debacle. It shows how institutions put in place to protect consumers have been co-opted by the industries they were created to watch … SUVs are still not subject to substantial safety regulations, and Americans continue to buy SUVs under the false impression that they are safer than ordinary cars. Penenberg’s book begs the question, just who is watching out for our safety?
