Drive!

Starred review from April 15, 2016
The creation of the American automobile. Goldstone (Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies, 2014, etc.) offers a wonderful, story-filled saga of the early days of the auto age. Against the background of late-17th-century attempts to use controlled explosions as a power source and the eventual rise of German and French carmakers, the author traces the development of American car manufacturing through the lives and work of a colorful cast of entrepreneurs and innovators, most notably Henry Ford (1863-1947), a farmer's son whose Model T would make him America's richest man, and George Selden (1846-1922), a judge's son whose patent for an automobile he never built spawned an industry. Ford dominates the narrative: at once charismatic and enigmatic, he was a marketing genius--the Steve Jobs of his time--who, contrary to legend, did not invent the automobile or mass production but made his fortune by selling the inventions of others. He converted "ideas to cash," which, writes Goldstone, is the definition of innovation. In the process, Ford betrayed associates, borrowed ideas, and notoriously took credit for the work of others. He would clash in courtroom encounters with the visionary Selden, the first American to apply the nascent technology of internal combustion to powering a "road carriage." Lacking funds to build such a vehicle, Selden patented his idea and subsequently collected licensing fees from makers of motorcars. While aspects of Goldstone's book will be familiar to auto buffs, the story is so compelling and well-crafted that most readers will be swept up in his vivid re-creation of a bygone era. The book abounds with detailed accounts of races, auto shows, and heroic cross-country journeys and explains in plain English the advances in automotive engineering that transformed early vehicles from playthings of the wealthy to functional, low-cost cars for the masses. "Horse Is Doomed," read one headline in 1895. This highly readable popular history tells why.

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Starred review from February 15, 2016

In 1895 attorney George B. Selden received a patent for a "road-carriage" he designed but didn't construct. The Selden patent covered all rudimentary gasoline-powered vehicles built since 1879 and manufactured, sold, or used in the United States during a 17-year span. His collaborators, the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, awarded licenses and collected royalties on automobiles made by other manufacturers until 1903, when the patent was challenged by a coalition of automakers headed by Henry Ford. Historian Goldstone (Birdmen) argues that Selden was a visionary, one of the first Americans to apply a nascent technology--the internal combustion engine--to a vehicle, and that had Selden acquired the necessary funding and political connections, he almost certainly would have become a preeminent auto magnate. Goldstone outlines Ford's eventual legal victory over Selden in 1911; this revisionist work insists that Ford's genius was not inventor but rather as a corporate manager, publicist, and an adapter to the demands of the marketplace. He concludes, "men such as Henry Ford will always be patrolling the fringes eager to convert ideas to cash. And it is that alchemy...that defines the process we call innovation." VERDICT A splendid dissection of the Selden/Ford patent face-off and its place in automotive historiography, this work will be enjoyed by business, legal, transportation, social, and intellectual historians; general readers; and all libraries.--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2016
George Selden's name is largely forgotten today, but it was he, rather than Henry Ford, who created the automobile. Ford, however, popularized it, as he did assembly-line production, which he is wrongly credited for inventing. This book contains the great names in automotive historythe Dodge brothers, Barney Oldfield, all the French (they seemed, until Ford, to lead the Americans in development of the vehicle)and it is fascinating to read just how distant the events of about a century ago are. Traffic lights were introduced, highways paved, paints improved, engines developed, and the car itself moved from its primitive beginnings to the familiar sight it quickly became. Ford himself, largely absent in the early pages of this book, was not a nice fellow, but after a series of court cases (which he lost) he emerges as the pioneer of the automobile as we know it. An engaging new take on the history of technological innovation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)