Includes bibliographical references (pages 539-592) and index.

Henry Ford, a major architect of modern America, has lived on in the imagination of his fellow citizens as an enduring figure of fascination, an inimitable individual, a controversial personality, and a social visionary from the moment his Model T brought the automobile to the masses and triggered the consumer revolution. Ford first made the automobile affordable, but grew skeptical of consumerism's corrosive impact on moral values; insisted on a living wage for his workers but opposed unions, established the assembly line but worried about its effect on the work ethic; welcomed African Americans to his company but was a rabid anti-Semite. Watts shows us how a Michigan farm boy emerged as one of America's richest men and one of its first mass-culture celebrities, became a folk hero to millions of ordinary citizens and yet also excited the admiration of Lenin and Hitler.--From publisher description.

SACFinal081324