Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress Book

It would be unfair to label "Wheels for the World" as just a "corporate history" of Ford Motor Company on its centennial anniversary; it's so much more that that'a biography of one of the most controversial and far-reaching pioneers in American business, a history of the automobile industry, an overview of the labor and civil rights movements and a study of American industry's role in two world wars. Oh, and it's also a great look at how some of the greatest (and worst) American cars were developed and marketed. Though a mammoth work at 858 pages, it's highly readable since the author is the renowned historian Douglas Brinkley; Brinkley has a gift for choosing the revealing story or statistic that humanizes what could have been a dry recounting in other hands. For example, who knew that the Edsel, a famous flop, was the source of quite a struggle in naming? The Ford family was against "Edsel," the name of Henry Ford's son, from the beginning. Ford reached out to unconventional sources such as poet Marianne Moore who suggested Mongoose Civique, Thunder Crester, Pastelogram and Utopian Turteltop; one executive even suggested Drof, which is Ford spelled backwards. The successes far outweighed the flops, however, and Brinkley covers the runaway successes of the Model A, Model T, Mustang and Taurus with illuminating detail. To his credit, he doesn't shy away from the darker side of the Ford story'Henry Ford's anti-Semitism, the violence and spying on early union organizers, the Pinto fuel tank debacle and the Explorer Firestone tire recall. It's a shame that Brinkley had to end the book in 2003, when Ford was still in the process of what would become a successful rebuilding following the shedding of several foreign car company acquisitions in the 1990's, but it fits the necessary century limitation in the book's scope. Whether your interest is cars or 20th Century history or both, you'll enjoy this impressive work. Recommended (not currently available as an e-book).