I Invented the Modern Age

The Rise of Henry Ford and the Most Important Car Ever Made

By: Richard Snow

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Every century or so, our republic has been remade by a new technology: 170 years ago the railroad changed Americans' conception of space and time; in our era, the microprocessor revolutionized how humans communicate. But in the early 20th century the agent of creative destruction was the gasoline engine, as put to work by an unknown and relentlessly industrious young man named Henry Ford.

Born the same year as the battle of Gettysburg, Ford died two years after the atomic bombs fell, and his life personified the tremendous technological changes achieved in that span. Growing up as a Michigan farm boy with a bone-deep loathing of farming, Ford intuitively saw the advantages of internal combustion. Resourceful and fearless, he built his first gasoline engine out of scavenged industrial scraps. It was the size of a sewing machine. From there, scene by scene, Richard Snow vividly shows Ford using his innate mechanical abilities, hard work, and radical imagination as he transformed American industry.

In many ways, of course, Ford's story is well known; in many more ways, it is not. Richard Snow masterfully weaves together a fascinating narrative of Ford's rise to fame through his greatest invention, the Model T. When Ford first unveiled this car, it took 12 and a half hours to build one. A little more than a decade later, it took exactly one minute. In making his car so quickly and so cheaply that his own workers could easily afford it, Ford created the cycle of consumerism that we still inhabit. Our country changed in a mere decade, and Ford became a national hero. But then he soured, and the benevolent side of his character went into an ever-deepening eclipse, even as the America he had remade evolved beyond all imagining into a global power capable of producing on a vast scale not only cars, but airplanes, ships, machinery, and an infinity of household devices.

A highly pleasurable listen, filled with scenes and incidents from Ford's life, particularly during the intense phase of his secretive competition with other early car manufacturers, I Invented the Modern Age shows Richard Snow at the height of his powers as a popular historian and reclaims from history Henry Ford, the remarkable man who, indeed, invented the modern world as we know it.

©2013 Richard Snow (P)2013 Tantor

great listen

Mr Ford was an interesting , man and this book is a great introduction to his accomplishments

great

Great book
iI love h9w it went into detail of Henry for life from childhood till his death

Excellent except for the gaping hole in the story.

How do you write a Ford biography, subtitle it "I invented the modern world," and never mention The Depression, UAW or the River Rouge Massacre? The narration is excellent. The story of how Ford built the model T and thereby transformed America is fascinating. But if the author could find pages to cover Ford's pacifism, quixotic attempt to end WW I, antisemitism and devolution into a jealous crank he could have devoted a chapter to inform us about Ford's role in some of the most consequential events in America's pre WW II history. He does not and an otherwise five star book gets only two.

A great American turned sour

This book is beautifully written and well narrated. It will appeal to Ford fans and students of human nature alike. Halfway through the book I was ready to buy a Ford. By the end, not so much.

Henry Ford turned Awful

The book was written very well. I was impressed with Henry Ford, then unimpressed at his later years. What a terrible man in the end. Author and voice actor did a fantastic job.