Book Description

First published in 1923, this biography is widely regarded by many automotive historians as the finest and most dispassionate character study of Henry Ford ever written. Written by the Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, an Episcopalian minister who was also the head of the sociology department at Ford Motor Company, this collection of essays serves to analyze the “psychological puzzle such as the unusual mind and personality of Henry Ford presents.” A gripping read for history buffs and fans of historical biographies. “Students of Henry Ford should be delighted by this republication of Samuel S. Marquis’s shrewd evaluation of the legendary industrialist. A close friend and associate of Ford for many years, Marquis developed many compelling insights into the automobile maker’s character and personality. One comes away from this book with a much greater sense of what made Ford tick.”—STEVEN WATTS, Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia and author of The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century “Marquis was the first Ford intimate to criticize the industrialist in print. Aware that he was treading on thin ice, Marquis recalled that Ford had told him that ‘the best friend one has is the man who tells him the truth.’ Hopefully, the clergyman remarked, ‘[he] will receive the critical portion of these pages in the same spirit.’ Ford emphatically did not...Marquis’s book would have been widely read had not the Ford organization been fairly successful in buying up copies and persuading book dealers not to sell it.”—DAVID L. LEWIS