To Find Out More

There has been a great deal written about Henry Ford—in fact two large new biographies have come out this year —but one older book that David Halberstam found particularly readable was Keith Sward’s “irreverent” The Legend of Henry Ford , originally published in 1948 and reissued as a paperback by Atheneum in 1968. There is also, he said, a “very good small book” by Anne Jardim, The First Henry Ford , published by the MIT Press in 1970. Allan Nevins’s trilogy, Ford , much praised by scholars, is no longer in print but is still available in libraries. For a vivid sense of the man’s life, readers can visit Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, which is open year-round. Writing about this “stupendous” museum in the December 1980 issue of American Heritage, Walter Karp said that the collection reflects Ford’s mind so intimately that it becomes almost a three-dimensional autobiography.