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HENRY FORD, CONSUMERISM, CONSCIOUSNESS AND A NEW AMERICA
Guest: Steven Watts Program 3142
Host: Michael Toms Interview Date: 4/6/2006 Program Length: 1 Hour
Media:
MP3 Download
Price: $1.99
Program Description: Imagine taking a camping trip in a Model T. Now look around and see Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone as your companions. You sit around the campfire exchanging wild ideas, while members of the press hover just beyond your circle, snapping photos and feverishly scribbling notes from the conversation of geniuses. Such is the nature of this interview with historian Steven Watts. After five years culling through Henry Ford's lifetime collection of personal notes and documents, and records of interviews with his colleagues and employees, Mr. Watts brings us a picture of a man whose impact on our society extends far beyond the automobile and the assembly line. Ford planted seeds of consumerism, modern marketing practices, anti-smoking activism-and even fostered the now widespread availability of campsites. But his complexity and contradictions are perhaps most intriguing, as "a man whose talents were enormous and whose flaws in many ways were equally enormous, who outraged intellectuals but had a kind of love from common folk in this country…a kind of folk hero." Enjoy this humorous and poignant look at a man who is such an incremental part of the fiber of American culture. 1 Hour
