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    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
    The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip
    Audiobook9 hours

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

    Written by Jeff Guinn

    Narrated by Josh Hamilton

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJul 9, 2019
    ISBN9781508279808
    Author

    Jeff Guinn

    Jeff Guinn is the bestselling author of numerous books, including Go Down Together, The Last Gunfight, Manson, The Road to Jonestown, War on the Border, and Waco. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

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    Reviews for The Vagabonds

    4.5/5

    34 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It was a really interesting book and I especially liked the good story of the old fiddler from the beginning and how his life was changed by the 3 old coots; Edison, Firestone and Ford. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys history and business.
    • 4/5
      In 1914, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison took a road trip to the Everglades. They were joined by the naturist and writer John Burroughs and later on Harvey Firestone. Coining themselves, The Vagabonds, they decided to continue these annual road trips for the next decade. Guinn has done his homework and he supplies plenty of historical and biographical details, along the way. A fascinating slice of history, I knew nothing about.
    • 5/5
      This book is a fascinating portrait of two of the most famous Americans in 1920s. There is shades of Lear in the story of the aging Ford and aged Edison, two men living off the fame of their youthful achievements while refusing to acknowledge their own limitations.