In The Fords: An American Epic, Peter Collier and David Horowitz tell the riveting story of three generations of Fords, a dramatic story of conflict between fathers and sons played out against the backdrop of America's greatest industrial empire.
The story begins with the first Henry Ford, the mechanical wizard, tinkerer and "mad genius" who drove the automobile into the heart of American life and conquered the world with it. An American Original, by the end of his life he had become an embittered crank who so possessively loved the company he built that when his son, Edsel, tried to change it to suit the changing times, Henry destroyed him. It was left to Edsel's son Henry II to avenge him and save the Ford Motor Company in the postwar world.
From the details of the first Henry's illicit affair and illegitimate son, to the life and loves of "Hank the Deuce" and his celebrated feud with Lee Iacocca, this is an engrossing account of a vital chapter in American history. The authors have added new material to this classic work, showing how Henry II's line lost out to the line of his brother William Clay Ford in the quest to control this most American of companies in the twenty-first century.
In addition to The Fords, Peter Collier and David Horowitz are the authors of dynastic biographies of the Kennedys, Roosevelts, Rockefellers, and Fondas.
"They write like one extremely stylish man and research like a dozen assiduous ones?. As kingly in its primal and tragic sweep as any story that inspired Shakespeare and Sophocles, The Fords stands alone as the ultimate American dynastic saga, and Collier and Horowitz have told it with surpassing style and drive. It's a book, as they say in Detroit, with gasoline in its veins."
-San Francisco Examiner
"The Fords has integrity and consequence?. The authors are correct in emphasizing ? its resemblance to many of literature's great dramas."
-New York Times
"Peter Collier and David Horowitz have written the most readable and complete version of the legend yet?. Epic!"
-Detroit News
