Henry Ford: Genius of Mass Production – clip

Daniel Breen / Brandeis University

Henry Ford may have been both the most influential, and the most infuriating, of all of America’s industrial geniuses.  No one did more to bring about the mass consumer economy of the modern United States, with its continuing reliance on the automobile.  Yet Ford combined his visionary impulses with an intense nostalgia for the rural past—a past his own innovations had helped consign to oblivion—and a truly awful commitment to anti-Semitism.   Who, really, was Henry Ford?  In this presentation, we will try to address that question, by delving into the contributions and complexities of this thoroughly peculiar American genius.