Book & podcast collection

American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs

byWes Davis

Wes Davis follows the early automobile journeys of naturalist John Burroughs and industrialists Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, whose unlikely friendship brought together wilderness appreciation and technological ambition. Their highly publicized camping trips featured rough roads, elaborate support crews, celebrity encounters, jokes, arguments, and competing visions of progress. The book captures an America being transformed by cars, mass production, conservation, and tourism. Davis shows how these famous travelers helped invent the modern road trip while revealing tensions between the machines opening landscapes to visitors and the natural places Burroughs hoped to defend.

Publisher

Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.

Publication date

2023

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9781324000327