"Since their inception cars have defined American culture, but until quite recently car histories were largely written by and about men-with little attention given to the fascinating story of women and cars. In this engaging non-fiction narrative, Nancy A. Nichols, the daughter of a used car salesman, uses the cars her father sold and the ones her family drove to tell a larger story about how the car helped to define modern womanhood. From her sister's...

"In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of...

"The epic road trips--and surprising friendship--of John Burroughs, nineteenth-century naturalist, and Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, inventors of the modern age"-- In 1913 an unlikely friendship blossomed between Henry Ford and famed naturalist John Burroughs. When their mutual interest in Ralph Waldo Emerson led them to set out in one of Ford's Model Ts to explore New England, the trip would prove to be the first of many excursions that would take...

"The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists,...

"All roads begin somewhere and today's U. S. highway system began with an exploratory, cross-country ride, led by 28-year-old Army lieutenant colonel, Dwight Eisenhower. This is the story of that coast-to-coast journey and how the dream of connecting America with roads began. Before he led the liberation of Europe, before he became our nation's 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower's made a road trip in 1919 from Washington D.C. to California. The...