Beyond The Model T

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.

Somehow Henry Ford knew what Americans were hankering for: “Everybody wants to be someplace he ain’t. As soon as he gets there, he wants to go right back.” And so, he pioneered the Model T–the first affordable car for the masses. David Weitzman has meticulously documented the development of the assembly line and the many innovations and adaptations Ford put to use in making his famous Tin Lizzy. When the Ford plant first opened, the crew could make 18,000 cars a year at a cost of $950 each. In just ten years, they had refined the process enough so that they could build one million cars in a year and the price had come down to about $350. Filled with detailed black-and-white drawings, helpful text and captions, and fascinating quotes from Ford employees, this elegant book gives young readers a look at a mechanical genius in action.

The story of Ford Motor Company’s Model T is the story that launched the American automobile industry--and America’s love affair with the car. When he introduced the Model T in 1908, even an eternal optimist like Henry Ford could not have predicted the far-reaching changes he was setting in motion. One hundred years later, this illustrated history looks back at the beloved Tin Lizzie. The book follows the Model T from design considerations (its ground clearance, for instance, had to allow for the abysmal state of U.S. roadways at the time) to its lasting legacy, and along the way describes the mechanical, manufacturing, and marketing innovations that the car’s production entailed. Author Lindsay Brooke also relates the adventures and misadventures that were part of owning and driving a Model T. He chronicles the changes the car’s unprecedented popularity wrought in the auto industry (including Ford’s introduction of the “$5 day”), and he tracks the Model T through popular culture, from its role in early motorsports to its resurgent popularity in the 1950s and 60s as a platform for T-bucket hot rods. Illustrated throughout with period art and evocative photography, this book celebrates as never before the car that epitomized the American automobile.

"Around Detroit, suburbanization was led by Henry Ford, who not only located a massive factory over the city's border in Dearborn, but also was the first industrialist to make the automobile a mass consumer item. So, suburbanization in the 1920s was spurred simultaneously by the migration of the automobile industry and the mobility of automobile users. A welfare capitalist, Ford was a leader on many fronts--he raised wages, increased leisure time, and transformed workers into consumers, and he was the most effective at making suburbs an intrinsic part of American life. The decade was dominated by this new political economy--also known as "Fordism"--Linking mass production and consumption. The rise of Dearborn demonstrated that Fordism was connected to mass suburbanization as well. Ultimately, Dearborn proved to be a model that was repeated throughout the nation, as people of all classes relocated to suburbs, shifting away from central cities. Mass suburbanization was a national phenomenon. Yet the example of Detroit is an important baseline since the trend was more discernable there than elsewhere. Suburbanization, however, was never a simple matter of outlying communities growing in parallel with cities. Instead, resources were diverted from central cities as they were transferred to the suburbs. The example of the Detroit metropolis asks whether the mass suburbanization which originated there represented the "American dream," and if so, by whom and at what cost. This book will appeal to those interested in cities and suburbs, American studies, technology and society, political economy, working-class culture, welfare state systems, transportation, race relations, and business management"--

In this Old West tale of deceit, revenge, and greed, full of scoundrels, rogues, and desperadoes on a lawless frontier, John Barton learns what it takes to become a man. Chasing his boyhood dream of staking his claim in the Mauvaises Terres, the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, John Barton comes face to face with the undeniable truth that the only winners in life are those willing to take their destiny into their own hands. Signing on to a cattle drive to the Dakota Territory, he is duped into taking part in a dangerous cattle-rustling foray deep into Mexico. Unable to turn back, he fights to survive in a life-or-death struggle during a grueling cattle drive, beset by violent storms, renegade Indians, and men seeking revenge. Finally staking his claim, he confronts the deeper meaning of his lifelong quest and of the mysterious spiritual roots of a land and its people that will forever lie somewhere beyond the horizon.