The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip
, subject: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone's annual automobile road trips and the businesses/personalities behind them, 2019
Ford and Edison spent a decade on road trips that doubled as business publicity, and their opposite habits show how certainty and restless invention each carry a cost.
About the book
Across annual road trips from 1914 through 1925, Ford, Edison, Firestone, and Burroughs turn friendship, camping, publicity, and industrial celebrity into a revealing portrait of early automobile culture.
Why read it
Best if you want to see how a founder's defining strength, whether Ford's certainty or Edison's restless invention, can also become the thing that costs him.
Key themes
- Friendship that doubled as publicity
- When conviction hardens into ego
- The cost of scattered invention
Evidence and original sources
Sources: official Founders episodes — #190, #267
This record is supported by 9 public evidence rows linked to original Founders episodes.
- Henry Ford and Thomas Edison — David introduces The Vagabonds by Jeff Guinn as the book this episode is built around, covering Ford and Edison's decade of road trips.
- Thomas Edison — David identifies Vagabonds as covering Ford and Edison's relationship and ties it to episode 190.