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

Steven Watts

List Price: $30.00
Our Price: $30.00
Used Price: $10.00
Publisher: Knopf
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Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 Stars

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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.

Hardcover: 640 pages
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375407359
Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
Weight: 2.15 pounds
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Customer Reviews

Henry Ford Book Christmas Gift: Avg. Customer Rating: 5 Stars; It's a great book with TONS of Information and in Wonderful condition which I received in a very timely manner and MY HUSBAND LOVED IT!
A massive work, with threads of the story sometimes tricky to follow: Avg. Customer Rating: 5 Stars; Here was this supreme industrial genius, Henry Ford, with a dark side which was hard to understand. Do read the two professional reviews above. They cover some very good ground about this book between them. Beware that, like many overly-highbrow reviewers, both are guilty of the "but" syndrome: they will tell you that Henry Ford was the premier genius of the 20th century, BUT his personality wrecked a lot of things. That implied "but," as any negotiator or linguist will tell you, says that the reviewer didn't mean any of the good stuff before the "but." That's unfair. Reading this quite lengthy book cannot help but let the reader conclude that Ford muscled this country into the modern age we all have now.

The author often brings in Ford's own version of what a modern society ought to be. This is interesting, but not key to U.S. history. It is surprising that this very detailed book does not seem to distinguish the differing importance between: Ford's gifts to manufacturing technology and philosophy - decisive; and his wishes about how people should act in a society - irrelevant. The book makes this point indirectly many times, although the author seems not to catch on himself.

The only really troublesome aspect of "People's Tycoon" is the wandering too freely through time in telling the Ford story. Like many histories in print, the author follows a thread of thought through years, then comes back to other threads of thought (think back to some of our confusing 6th grade history books). If this drives you crazy, then pick another biography of Ford. This may not cause a problem for many readers, but it is understandable that it could be for some, and this is a cautionary note. For example, as Henry Ford lost his intellect slowly through the decades, one might want to know if these losses were happening at the same time as, say, when he was shamefully ranting about races and cultures, or about his misunderstandings with son Edsel Ford. Still, this large work is well researched, and very well worth the time.
BARGAIN BOOKS!!!!!!!!!: Avg. Customer Rating: 3 Stars; This is a review of the condition of the book - not the content of the book.

I purchased this because I enjoy biographies of iconic American figures - and at 7.99 this book is hard to pass up so I figured I would add it to m y collection.

This book came wrapped in celephane as a new book would - with a tight binding and inexpensive material for binder cover. The pages at the end of the book did not line up as the same width along the edge where you open the book. It looks like a 100 year old library book where pages could be falling out.

The paper quality for a hardcover book is also below what one would expect. Most of my paperbacks have a better quality more durable paper than this book does.

I guess I'll chalk this up to " You get what you pay for " but If I paid full price for this book - I'd definitely send it back for anohter copy.

I'll try and update the content review of this book later after I read the book. But I'm currently reading another title.
A good book about a weird man!: Avg. Customer Rating: 4 Stars; How interesting. Henry Ford was the Bill Gates of his day and changed America forever. But he was kind of a nutcase!

This book gets bogged down occassionally by too much information on his social positions. And he sometimes repeats himself. But all-in-all it was a good read and an eye-opener about one of the men who made the American Century. I would recommend it.
Opinionated and Verbose: Avg. Customer Rating: 2 Stars; While the facts are presented in a more or less historical fashion (Watts jumps from one year to the next and then back again with dizzying speed) the author continually and exhaustively repeats himself. He resorts to quoting newspapers of the day (make that ALL of the newspapers of the day) to reinforce his already over-stated and rambling views. In fact, one wonders how much of this book was actually written by the author. Three out of four paragraphs on every page are nothing more than quotes from newspaper articles. The title of the book should be something along the line of, "Henry Ford -- According to the Newspapers -- With a Smattering of Left Wing Collegiate Opinion Thrown-In for Good Measure."
A long-winded, anti-corporate, pro-Marxist-Unionist perspective by a college professor obviously hoping for PBS to turn this voluminous sleeping pill into an equally borish mini-series.

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