The Flivver King

[guest587]

A story of Ford-America

Read it for free here,
https://panotbook.com/the-flivver-king/

This was a great book. Very interesting to watch Abner Shutt grow up with Henry Ford... I believe there are some true to life events that have happened within the book, and the ending is a bit dismal- despite all the wonder.

Has anyone read this book? What did you think?

Book Overview
"Fiction. Facimilie reprint, available again from SPD. Fiftieth anniversary edition. Upton Sinclair's THE FLIVVER KING stands among the finest of modern American historical novels. Workers and bosses, flappers and Klansmen, war and depression, Prohibition outlaws and high-society parties, unions and anti-union gun thugs -- few aspects of American life in the first four decades of our century are missing from this small masterpiece. THE FLIVVER KING sustains the same sure grasp of working-class life which characterized Sinclair's earlier classic, THE JUNGLE, but with much less sentimentality and with a steadier focus on how alienated work breeds not only degradation but also resistance and revolt."

[guest587]

In the book, Upton Sinclair mentions Samuel Marquis.

Samuel Marquis was a reverend who stepped down from his position to become the head of the sociology department(at the request of Henry Ford). In the beginning Henry Ford implemented great ideals, and it was Samuel Marquis job to help counsel workers and provide feedback to Mr. Ford. Workers had to have a type of moral character to work for the Ford company.

Well, Mr. Marquis left when those ideals started to disappear-
He wrote a book about the good and the bad... And I took note to look it up and see where I could find a copy. I'm sharing it here with the hopes I might read this book someday.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/henry-ford-samuel-s-marquis/1111798066

Overview
Regarded by many automotive historians as the finest and most dispassionate character study of Henry Ford ever written, Henry Ford: An Interpretation has long been out of print and priced out of the reach of many collectors. Published at the height of Ford's success in 1923, the volume was written by the Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, an Episcopalian minister who was also the head of the sociology department at Ford Motor Company. Instead of a history of Ford Motor Company or a simple retelling of Ford's life story, Marquis claims that his collection of essays is intended to analyze the "psychological puzzle such as the unusual mind and personality of Henry Ford presents."

In insightful chapters that can be read in any order, Marquis examines Ford's mastery of self-promotion, his invincible reputation, his religious views, and his "elusive" personality. He also considers Ford through the lens of his corporation by commenting on its industrial operations, its charitable causes, and its "executive scrap heap." According to many accounts, Henry Ford was greatly pained by the criticism in some of Marquis's essays, which led him to suppress the wide distribution of the volume. Indeed, so many copies of Henry Ford: An Interpretation were borrowed from the Detroit Public Library and never returned that the library was forced to remove the volume from its shelves. Not surprisingly, the original edition of this book is very expensive and hard to find as a result of these sorts of actions.

Ford history enthusiasts as well as readers who are interested in historical biography will be grateful for the reprint of this significant volume.