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The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century

Steven Watts
The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century
  • List Price: $30.00
  • Used Price: $7.64
  • Publisher: Knopf
  • Avg. Customer Rating: 4 Stars
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Product Details

Product Description: 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 outsized 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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Customer Reviews

The People's Tycoon
Avg. Customer Rating: 3 Stars
Content is great, riveting story, but the book is too small with font size also being too small. Feels like a cheap book where you didn't get your money's worth compared to the other larger more normal size books that are similar biography subject matters. Further, whilst the content and life story are rich in detail, it lacks so many historical photographs that are quite accessible only to find a handful of photos from this highly accomplished man rather including many photographic images that his other contemporaries of his time included.
Tiny print
Avg. Customer Rating: 3 Stars
This is not a review of the book but a heads up to middle age and senior readers. The print is incredibly small in the paperback version. I was looking forward to reading the book but after receiving it I couldn't believe that a company would actually publish a book using such small print. If you can find a hard copy version buy that.
Ford: Filled with interesting ideas that are still relevant today
Avg. Customer Rating: 5 Stars
Henry Ford had so many amazing interests and his life covered such an important part of modern history. Ford wanted to see the world become industrialized because he thought it would give people more freedom from toil. He also wanted people connected to the land. He envisioned a time when people would work in factories but also work the land. He had so many progressive ideas but his motivation left me wondering what kind of person he truly was. I came away feeling he was selfish, brilliant, energetic and much engaged in the world. He did great things which were progressive but I felt his motivation was always to produce more. People were like machines to him.

I liked the way the author organized the book not by timeline but rather by events. The book had me looking at the past but also the issues of today. Ford would have had much to say about the current state of the economy, our health care issues, education, personal responsibility and so much more. The way he carried out most of his ideas did not appeal to me but the ideas were brilliant. Not only did I enjoy reading the book, I also enjoyed thinking about the issues he thought about. If you like history, politics and the story of an amazing family, this is the book for you.
Well-written, admirably broad, but lacking in depth
Avg. Customer Rating: 4 Stars
I recently read several biographies of Henry Ford. Appropriately, perhaps, most of them seemed like they had been written on an assembly line. In other words, the same old facts--well-known since the 1950's at least--get presented in the same chronological sweep. For example: young Henry Ford was an indifferent student at his school, but loved to tinker with and repair mechanical objects. Later: Henry Ford believed in paying his workers well, so that in return they could purchase his Model T automobiles. There are dozens of these chestnuts, and braided together they do indeed create a fascinating portrait.

Here's the problem: Henry Ford lived an amazing and complex life in an amazing and complex period in American history and world history. So a biography clocking in at fewer than a few thousand pages can only give--in my judgment--a quick glance at deeply involved and ambiguous situations and conditions. For example: how did Henry Ford evolve, if at all, on his stance on workers who wanted to unionize? Who influenced him? How? When? What were the results of his shift, short-term and long-term? To plumb that question exhaustively, or even reasonably thoroughly, would take at least 50 pages. Another: analyzed coldly, what were Henry Ford's mechanical and engineering talents as compared to the many other founders of American automobile-manufacturing firms in the first 25 years of the 20th century? Again--this question, were it to be answered thoroughly, would require an enormous chapter, if not a book in itself.

I find "The People's Tycoon" to be a solid survey of Henry Ford's life, but in my judgment it is not deep. It is, nonetheless, a well-written, smart, detail-rich, easy-to-read study brimming with information. If you want a single-book peek into this American icon, I would recommend it.
UPDATED: Now would give it four and a half stars
Avg. Customer Rating: 3 Stars
UPDATE ADDED: After continuing to read this book, I want to change my review to 4 1/2 stars. It really picks up steam in the last half and I have been really enjoying it. There is much more of a storytelling element.


(ORIGINAL REVIEW) This is a very well researched book, but I found that the author often would tell of one event, such as the Five Dollar Day, and just repeat the same basic things over and over again. This makes for a very stilted and somewhat rambling account. I wish he would have stuck more to storytelling and less to reactions from others.

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