Author is Detroit newspaper man who gives many accounts of his talks with Henry Ford in the period 1917-1946.

The History Makers biography of Henry Ford illustrates the transformation of an American businessman from his building successes and ideals to his emergence as an icon of industry and the modern world. This title starts by analyzing his origins and the stages of his career, then goes beyond chronology to evaluate his emblematic principles and inventiveness. From life to legacy, readers witness the evolution of a man into legend.

New to this edition are chronicles of factory and general hospitals, nursing schools and services, health clinics, and a research institute established by Henry Ford, and the more than a dozen commissaries Ford operated, selling a wide assortment of items to Ford employees and their families from pillow cases to children's shoes.

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is a classic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford’s outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in this engaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set off the consumer revolution by producing a car affordable to the masses, all the while lamenting the moral toll exacted by consumerism. He believed in giving his workers a living wage, though he was entirely opposed to union labor. He had a warm and loving relationship with his wife, but sired a son with another woman. A rabid anti-Semite, he nonetheless embraced African American workers in the era of Jim Crow. Uncovering the man behind the myth, situating his achievements and their attendant controversies firmly within the context of early twentieth-century America, Watts has given us a comprehensive, illuminating, and fascinating biography of one of America’s first mass-culture celebrities.

Born on July 30, 1863, the American industrialist Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but he was definitely the one who made it possible for a middle class American to buy one. Ford became one of the richest men in the world, thanks to the success and profit of Ford Motor Company. He created the Ford Model T car in 1908 and made good use of the assembly line mode of production to mass produce an inexpensive car, a method which is often known as “Fordism.” He sold millions of cars to the common American consumer and had a lasting impact on infrastructure and technological development in the US. In this book, we will take a look at how Henry Ford became one of the richest persons in the entire world and how he revolutionized industry by developing assembly line production.

A reprint of the rare and controversial biography of Henry Ford, first published in 1923, written by Ford’s close associate. Regarded by many automotive historians as the finest and most dispassionate character study of Henry Ford ever written, Henry Ford: An Interpretation has long been out of print and priced out of the reach of many collectors. Published at the height of Ford's success in 1923, the volume was written by the Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, an Episcopalian minister who was also the head of the sociology department at Ford Motor Company. Instead of a history of Ford Motor Company or a simple retelling of Ford's life story, Marquis claims that his collection of essays is intended to analyze the "psychological puzzle such as the unusual mind and personality of Henry Ford presents." In insightful chapters that can be read in any order, Marquis examines Ford's mastery of self-promotion, his invincible reputation, his religious views, and his "elusive" personality. He also considers Ford through the lens of his corporation by commenting on its industrial operations, its charitable causes, and its "executive scrap heap." According to many accounts, Henry Ford was greatly pained by the criticism in some of Marquis's essays, which led him to suppress the wide distribution of the volume. Indeed, so many copies of Henry Ford: An Interpretation were borrowed from the Detroit Public Library and never returned that the library was forced to remove the volume from its shelves. Not surprisingly, the original edition of this book is very expensive and hard to find as a result of these sorts of actions. Ford history enthusiasts as well as readers who are interested in historical biography will be grateful for the reprint of this significant volume.