---
product_id: 12572534
title: "Henry Ford (Lives and Legacies Series)"
brand: "vincent curcio"
price: "266 Lei"
currency: RON
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.ro/products/12572534-henry-ford-lives-and-legacies-series
store_origin: RO
region: Romania
---

# Henry Ford (Lives and Legacies Series)

**Brand:** vincent curcio
**Price:** 266 Lei
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Henry Ford (Lives and Legacies Series) by vincent curcio
- **How much does it cost?** 266 Lei with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.ro](https://www.desertcart.ro/products/12572534-henry-ford-lives-and-legacies-series)

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## Description

Henry Ford (Lives and Legacies Series)

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Much More Than an Industrial Titan
  

*by J***K on Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2014*

Vincent Curcio is an experienced biographer who, incidentally, also wrote a biography of Walter Chrysler. So it is no surprise that this biography is as much a story of the automobile business as it is of Henry Ford. This book is extremely well researched and presents a picture of Ford touching both his virtues and vices. The extent of research is reflected in the acknowledgments, notes, and index which take up 30% of the book.Ford was a complex person whose importance is not much realized today. For instance, many think he invented automobiles. He did not. Others think him the quintessence of the capitalist. He was not. Some have heard that he was an untutored ignoramus. He was not. His name is generally connected with automobiles, yet his influence in America may have been much larger in the agricultural field. For instance, his efforts led to the immense growth of soybean production in America and his tractors greatly multiplied the productivity of the family farmer across the board.Rather, Ford changed the automobile industry in two major ways. First, he used “assembly line” methods and other techniques to continually improve manufacture. This allowed him to reduce the price of cars, unlike his competitors, to bring them into a broader market. Second, he was a progressive in terms of social conventions. He raised the pay of his workers to unheard of heights in the early twentieth century, much to the distress of his fellow industrialists. He hired the handicapped and Blacks when industry, generally, would not. The result was that for the first time, factory workers could afford the complex products they made. He set up unique training programs and provided “social services” to his workers almost before the government got into that business. In a sense he opened the doors for workers to enter the middle class.Thought to be almost illiterate, in fact he was an intense reader. Much of his “philosophy” was based on a study of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He had a large personal library whose books were heavily marked and marginally notated by him. In some ways he was a major cause of the modern manufacturing age, yet was most comfortable recreating the rural world of his youth. His thoughts on personal healthy living sound like something written recently, and he lived a long time. Not long after he started his company he ended up owning it 100% without slipping into the clutches of the bankers and Wall Street he despised. He was the richest man in America yet spent millions on social experiments and, ultimately, created one of the largest charitable foundations.He was mercurial and obsessively controlling, insistent on having everything done his way only, yet he could change his mind in an instant and go totally in a different direction. He was secretive and eccentric, yet admired by the masses to whom he preached a philosophy much more progressive than his fellow industrialists could accept.This book has some annoying qualities as well. For instance, the author belabors Ford’s anti-Semitism far too much for a non-Jewish reader. The author seems to believe that in Ford’s time anti-Semitism was mild and hardly known in America, except for Ford. One can only wonder, then, why FDR, a New York liberal, refused to take in even a single boat load of Jewish refugees. The answer, I think, is that he knew that the public did not want a substantial influx of Jewish refugees. Ford was definitely anti-Semitic, yet had 3,000 working for him and had many close Jewish friends. It appeared to be more a generalized personal feeling rather than an animus to individuals. However, for a period he was very outspoken in his feelings and beliefs, but that was not unusual for Ford. Yet he was even considered as a potential presidential candidate in the 1920s.Another annoying quality is that the book skips all around chronologically so that in even a single chapter you need to be alert whether the author is recounting something from 1908 or 1938. Moreover, in some respects the focus drifts from Ford to the automobile business in general too much for my taste.These annoyances should not keep you from the book. They merely indicate the importance of reading it closely. There are some factual inconsistencies, but Ford himself was a bundle of inconsistencies on the one hand and enduring consistencies on the other. All of these qualities, and more, are well laid out in this book.  You will come away from this read with a much greater appreciation of Ford’s impact on the twentieth century and our time, but still somewhat mystified as to what motivated the man and what was the real source of his philosophy of life and his genius. It makes you think.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Brief but useful!
  

*by M***W on Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2020*

This is at best a "highlights" version of the life of one of the most influential,  consequential and controversial Americans of the 20th Century  (only 274 pages of text). I assume that this installment of the Oxford University "Lives and Legacies" series intends that its authors to do only that - offer a brief introduction to historical individuals. Henry Ford deserves a Ron Chernow-type biography along the lines of the one Chernow did about John D. Rockefeller, Titan. Until then, there is Steven Watts' book, The People's Tycoon, nearly twice as long and a much better source on Henry Ford than  this book. That said, this one is well written and does capably hit the highlights of Ford's life.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    A masterful work of concision
  

*by J***N on Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2013*

There may be someone currently writing who knows as much about the history of the American automobile industry as Vincent Curcio,but if there is, I don't know who that person is.  I've long been interested in this history, and as a result have read much about Ford.  But  I was not surprised when I read this new book to find that Curcio has distilled his vast knowledge into such a wonderful book.  Curcio is more than a great biographer; he proved that with his extraordinary biography of Walter Chrysler.  He's a great historian with a broad interest in the industrial revolution, and a particular focus on American automobile history.  His elegant discussion of a most inelegant subject, Ford's anti-Semitism, in itself makes this book worth buying.  There may not be a definitive Ford biography, but if there is, it may be this brief biography.  Curcio could easily have give us a thousand pages, and all would have been interesting, but he honed it to 274 pages and has given us a jewel of a book.

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*Product available on Desertcart Romania*
*Store origin: RO*
*Last updated: 2026-02-12*