I INVENTED THE MODERN AGE

Every century or so, the world has been changed by a new technology: 170 years ago it was the railroad; today it’s the microprocessor. But in the early twentieth century it was the gasoline-combustion engine, built by a young, unknown, industrious man named Henry Ford.

Born into a steam-powered world, the young farm boy saw the advantages of internal combustion; using his innate mechanical abilities, hard work, and imagination he transformed industry and went on to become an icon. In many ways, his story is well known; in just as many other ways, it is not.
Richard Snow weaves together a fascinating narrative of Ford’s rise to fame—as well as his creative personality and spirit—through his greatest invention, the Model T. The car transformed our America and the world in a decade, and made Ford a hero. But then Ford soured, and the benevolent side of his character went into an ever-deepening eclipse, even as the cultural change he initiated remade the world.

Richard Snow was born in New York City and he graduated with a B.A. from Columbia College in 1970. He worked at American Heritage magazine for nearly four decades and was its editor-in-chief for seventeen years. He is the author of several books, among them two novels and a volume of poetry. Snow has served as a consultant for historical motion picture—among them Glory—and has written for documentaries, including the Burns brothers’ Civil War, and Ric Burns’s award-winning PBS film Coney Island, whose screenplay he wrote. Most recently, he served as a consultant on Ken Burns’s World War II series, The War.