Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

Guinn, Jeff

Hardcover

Business BiographiesBiographies General20th Century United States History

Publisher Price: $28.00

ISBN10: 1501159305
ISBN13: 9781501159305
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: Jul 9 2019
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.10
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
A fascinating slice of rarely considered American history (Booklist)--the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison--whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life.

In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on.

Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America's roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life.

The Vagabonds is a portrait of America's burgeoning love affair with the automobile (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford's reputation, even as Edison's diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.

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