As founder of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford epitomized the can-do optimism of the industrial age. His homespun, folksy persona charmed Americans and redefined an alternate image of the wealthy industrialist. His Model T automobile, rolled out of his Michigan headquarters in 1908, was the first car to capture the national imagination and the first to sell in mass quantities. Upon doubling his workers' wages in 1914, Ford became an overnight celebrity.

Though he earned his fame as a wealthy industrialist, Ford grew up on a modest family farm. Born July 30, 1863, in Dearborn, Michigan, he spent his early years doing chores and tinkering with watches and steam engines. At age seventeen, he left home to take a job in Detroit for a manufacturer of railroad boxcars. For the next twenty years, he worked at a succession of technical jobs, eventually landing the position of chief...