Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company

Ford #1

by Allan Nevins, Frank Ernest Hill

Anyone who wants to see what a suprebly done business history book looks like should read this one. Nevins and Hill can almost be said to have invented the genre. It truly lives up to its title. The authors deftly tell the stories of both Henry Ford and the FoMoCo enterprise against a background of the times which createde their success. Here we see the early Henry Ford (this volume ends whin Ford was 52 years old), grasping for a way to make money out of this infant technology. We also see the chaotic state of an industry which had great potential, but which had not as yet determined what the nature of its product would be (gas, electric, steam, tool for the masses, plaything for the rich). The treatment of Ford's fight against the Seldon patent is especially well told. - Edwin J. Benson

Genres: Biography, History

688 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Allan Nevins was an American historian and journalist, renowned for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as President Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller.

Reviews

[Dan Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the place for any serious student of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company to start. It is heavily researched and sourced. It is volume one of a three volume set that takes us from Ford's ancestry to about 1950 (published 1954).

Equally important, in is the ur source for much of what we know about Henry Ford. For all its minute detail, however, the set is of its time and a highly -- indeed overly -- sympathetic. In all things, from his ancestry to his treatment of his son Edsel, from his battle with the Seldenites to his attacks on Jews, Ford's faults are downplayed and the view of history is as Ford himself would have written it.

[Tom Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marvelous book, and it's only the first of a trilogy.
In this book, Allan Nevins goes there. Before he tells you what a revolution Henry Ford wrought, he goes to sufficient length to remind the reader what it was like before there were cars, before there were roads other than muddy ruts. In example after example, Nevins gives tremendous context. The Seldin suit is explained better than anywhere--you understand all the wrinkles in this eight-year law suit that ended up vindicating the Ford Motor Company.

I also will say that he handles with more grace than several other bios of Henry Ford that I have read the painful parts of HF's life, the flirtation with antisemitism, the fighting organized labor. Yet, Nevins does not wallow in these periods the way other biographers seem to. In short, this was a wonderful read, one that does not skimp on any details. (I was motivated to buy the next two volumes even though they were pricy.

[Tom Nolan]

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