Henry
Ford, a major architect of modern America, has lived on in the imagination of
his fellow citizens as an enduring figure of fascination, an inimitable
individual, a controversial personality, and a social visionary from the moment
his Model T brought the automobile to the masses and triggered the consumer
revolution. But never before has his genius been brought to life so
vividly as by Steven Watts in this major new biography. Watts, the author of
the much acclaimed The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of
Life, has produced a superbly researched study of a man who was a bundle of
contradictions.
Ford
was the entrepreneur who first made the automobile affordable but who grew
skeptical of consumerism’s corrosive impact on moral values, an employer who
insisted on a living wage for his workers but stridently opposed unions, who
established the assembly line but worried about its effect on the work ethic,
who welcomed African Americans to his company in the age of Jim Crow but was a
rabid anti-Semite. He was the private man who had a warm, loving marriage while
siring a son with a mistress; a father who drove his heir, Edsel, so
relentlessly that it contributed to his early death; a folksy social
philosopher and at one time, perhaps, the most popular figure in America, who
treated his workers so harshly that they turned against him; creator of the
largest, most sophisticated factory in the world who preferred spending time in
his elaborate re-creation of a nineteenth century village; and the greatest
businessman of his age who haplessly lost control of his own company in his
declining years.
Watts
poignantly shows us how a Michigan farm boy from modest circumstances emerged
as one of America’s richest men and one of its first mass-culture celebrities,
one who became a folk hero to millions of ordinary citizens because of his
support of high wages and material abundance for everyday workers and yet also
excited the admiration of figures as diverse as Vladimir Lenin and Adolf
Hitler, John D. Rockefeller and Woodrow Wilson.
Disclosing
the man behind the myth and situating his achievements and controversies firmly
within the context of early twentieth century America, Watts has given us a
comprehensive, illuminating biography of an American icon.
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“Steven Watts attempts the most integrated understanding to date of Ford’s enormous influence and varied appeal…The fascinating result may change the way Henry Ford is remembered.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle