About
G. Wayne Miller is a filmmaker, podcaster, essayist, author of 20 fiction and non-fiction books, Providence Journal staff writer, and co-host and co-producer of the PBS/SiriusXM Satellite Radio program Story in the Public Square, a Telly Award-winning weekly show broadcast in 80 percent of all markets across America and 22 of the top 25. The series and its podcast feature interviews with today’s best authors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, scholars, artists, musicians and other storytellers about their creative processes and how their stories impact public understanding and policy.
Miller is a visiting fellow at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, in Newport, Rhode Island, where he is cofounder and director of the Story in the Public Square program, a partnership with The Providence Journal.
Miller was a member of The Providence Journal team that was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the newspaper’s coverage of The Station nightclub fire that killed 100, and he has been honored for his work more than 50 times. His books have been translated into several languages and published in hardcover, softcover, digital and audio versions.
A graduate of Harvard College, Miller is the father of three adult children and is married to Yolanda Gabrielle. Visit him at gwaynemiller.com
Featured Work
Car Crazy
Before the “Big Three,” even before the Model T, the race for dominance in the American car market was fierce, fast, and sometimes farcical. Car Crazy takes readers back to the passionate and reckless years of the early automobile era, from 1893, when the first US-built auto was introduced, through 1908, when General Motors was founded and Ford's Model T went on the market. The motorcar was new, paved roads few, and devotees of this exciting and unregulated technology battled with citizens who considered the car a dangerous scourge, wrought by the wealthy, that was shattering a more peaceful way of life.
Among the pioneering competitors were Ransom E. Olds, founder of Olds Motor Works and creator of a new company called REO; Olds' cutthroat new CEO Frederic L. Smith; William C. “Billy” Durant of Buick Motor Company (and soon General Motors); and inventor Henry Ford. They shared a passion for innovation, both mechanical and entrepreneurial, but their maniacal pursuit of market share would also involve legal manipulation, vicious smear campaigns, and zany publicity stunts—including a wild transcontinental car race that transfixed the public. Their war on wheels ultimately culminated in a courtroom battle that would shape the American car industry forever.
Based on extensive original research, Car Crazy is a page-turning story of popular culture, business, and sport at the dawn of the twentieth century, filled with compelling, larger-than-life characters, each an American original.
