Books : Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress
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In association with Amazon.com
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by: Douglas G. Brinkley
List Price: $18.00Amazon.com's Price: $12.24 You Save: $5.76 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.76292092
EAN: 9780142004395
ISBN: 0142004391
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 880
Publication Date: June 01, 2004
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Release Date: June 01, 2004
Sales Rank: 262426
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In this monumental work, one of our finest historians reveals the riveting details of Ford Motor Company’s epic achievements, from the outlandish success of the Model T and V-8 to the glory days of the Thunderbird, Mustang, and Taurus. Brilliant innovators, colorful businessmen, and clever eccentrics, as well as the three Ford factories themselves, all become characters in this gripping drama. Douglas Brinkley is a master at crafting compelling historical narratives, and this exemplary history of one of the preeminent American corporations is his finest achievement yet.
Amazon.com Review:
In conjunction with its 100th anniversary, the Ford Motor Company opened its monumental archives to the unfettered research of author/historian Douglas Brinkley. And while the 800-page history that resulted from that work (as well as Brinkley's tireless, amply footnoted source work elsewhere) is comprehensive to a fault, the scope and enduring impact of the industrial colossus wrought by Henry Ford make it often seem like mere introduction. Brinkley's meticulous, enlightened work can't help but find endless fascination with the company's founder, whose presence resonates through every phase of the company's history, from its fitful start (FMC was the third company to bear the Ford name), through the rise of the Model T (still one of the most ubiquitous and revolutionary mechanical contrivances of the last millennia), to its cycles of corporate decay and rebirth (variously via Iacocca's Mustang in the 60's and the technical innovations and potent retrenchment of trans-nationalism in the 90's). Henry Ford remains one of the greatest human paradoxes in a century filled with them: a largely self-taught engineer who couldn't read a blueprint, yet became a mass-production visionary; an employer whose social conscience (and no small amount of shrewd business acumen) doubled the salary of his employees one era, employed thugs to crush their union organizing efforts the next; a world figure who read little, yet published much, including anti-war editorials and vile, anti-Semitic tracts--despite the fact that his monumental manufacturing facilities were designed by Jews whose friendship and professional relationships he cultivated. The enviro-social impact of Ford's industrial innovations continues to loom, and Brinkley hardly ignores them. But his research is largely focused on the rich players (and their often perplexing psychology) of the Ford saga, all-too-human characters whose ambitious empire will continue to cast its long shadows over many a generation to come. --Jerry McCulley
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Great early Ford history
I liked this book a lot and obviously a substantial amount of energy was put into research.
One thing though.......it is so comprehensive up to Henry's death, and then little is left for the days of HenryII et al. So, my remark is what about the exciting post-war years and then the present? The old 3 volume Nevins book covers this more thoroughly.At least until 1962.
So, I want suggestions about a Ford history through the Iaccoca years til now. Yes, we know he built the Mustang, ... Read More
Rating: - Quality Ford corporate history
Excellent corporate history of Ford Motor Company, and unavoidably, a biography of Henry Ford, who for the first 45 years of the company was Ford Motor Company.
The chaotic early years of the automotive industry are captured in the two failed car companies Ford left behind, including the Henry Ford Company which was taken over by Henry Leland and renamed Cadillac (the first Cadillac was a Ford design!), and in the thought processes of Henry Ford thinking and planning for a million cars per ... Read More
Rating: - A Sponsored History
Douglas Brinkley has convinced me that you can at once be sponsored by a corporation to do its history AND not fawn over the organization AND write readably.
Someone else here descreibed the book as an "endurance test." I would not agree...I thought the book, though long, was well-organized, well-paced and easy to maintain reader interest.
Henry Ford I is the centerpiece, all right, but I especially enjoyed Brinkley's insights into the much more private, even reticent, Edsel ... Read More
Rating:  - The story of Ford, from Henry to Bill
Wheels for the World is a captivating look at the Ford Motor Company from its earliest conception to the present day. Douglas Brinkley, being granted unrivalled access to Ford's archives, takes the reader back to the beginning of Henry Ford's youth onwards to the incorporation of the Ford Motor Company to today. The richness and detail Brinkley provides is what sets this apart from other historical biographical works. And in a sense, this is what the book is, a biographical look at Henry Ford and his ... Read More
Rating: - Henry Ford & Ford Motor -- what a story!
Last year, I read a book about Henry Ford and his anti-Semitism. At that time, I had a very narrow view about the man - I wish now that I had read this book, Douglas Brinkley's study of Ford and his company, before I had read that one.
Brinkley's mammoth volume on this one man and the company he created is a tremendous addition to American business history. Brinkely gives us a comprehensive study (about half of the book) of Henry Ford the man and how he created the Ford Motor Company. This ... Read More
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