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.
