MY FORTY YEARS WITH FORD

A terrific inside story of the dynamics of the Ford dynasty which commingles the personal participation of the author and the history of a business empire in a manner as challenging as it is exciting. Charles Sorenson, sometimes known as ""Henry Ford's Man"", emerges as a man who called the plays as he saw them, willing to cross Ford if he felt the interests of the Company countered those of the founder -- he sided with Edsel when Henry Senior shamelessly sicked Harry Bennett on Edsel when union difficulties and Edsel's fatal illness were in process, and later he insisted that the Ford grandsons take over despite Ford's determination to hold the presidential reins at eighty. The forty years with Ford cover the growth of a great industry -- there is an ""I was there"" account of the birth of the Model T, the conception of the assembly line, the declaration of the five dollar day -- the dream of a Ford for everyman produced and provided. Sorenson's own career ranges from immigration at four from Denmark and patternmaking as a teenager to production chief and vice president in Ford Motors Company. His greatest job came with World War II, when he constructed Willow Run in nineteen months and built complete planes through the war years. This is a tough, top-notch job, a compelling account with the fascination of the titanic power and personality struggles in a business empire -- another aspect of an historical American industry.