Explore the exciting history of automobiles from the steam-powered vehicle to the Motorwagen, the Model T, the Prius, and the Tesla! Readers will learn about the amazing scientists, inventors, and innovators throughout history whose work shaped the development of automobiles. Table of contents, diagram, fun facts, a glossary, and an index are included. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Checkerboard Library is an imprint...

A brief biography of Henry Ford with emphasis on how he came to develop fast, sturdy, and reliable racing cars that eventually gave him the idea for his Model T.

Most great figures in American history reveal great contradictions, and Henry Ford is no exception. He championed his workers, offering unprecedented wages, yet crushed their attempts to organize. Virulently anti-Semitic, he never employed fewer than 3,000 Jews. An outspoken pacifist, he made millions producing war materials. He urbanized the modern world, and then tried to drag it back into a romanticized rural past he'd helped to destroy. As the...

Relates the excitement caused by Henry Ford as he drove the "horseless carriage" he built, particularly when he decided to win a race to get money to build a new car that anyone could afford.

Inside the outrageous, come-from-behind story of Elon Musk and Tesla's bid to build the perfect car Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley. To some he's a genius and a visionary; to others he's a mercurial con artist. Billions of dollars have been gained and lost on his tweets; his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids. But for all his outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel, his most audacious vision is...

Based on the true story of Robert Kearns. The Kearns' were a typical 1960s Detroit family. Bob is a college professor and part-time inventor. When Bob invents a device that would eventually be used by every car in the world, the Kearns' think they ha

A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors' assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin--Paul Ryan's hometown--and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills--but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long...

The first comprehensive, authoritative account of the amazing rise and tragic fall of Preston Tucker, the visionary entrepreneur who, in the wake of World War II, took on the Big Three automakers to create a revolutionary new vehicle: the Tucker '48, the first car in almost a decade to be built fresh from the ground up-- In the wake of World War II, the U.S. automobile industry was fully unprepared to meet the growing demands of the public, for whom...

Tells the incredible story of how Detroit answered the call to arms during WWII, centering on Henry Ford and his tortured son Edsel, who, when asked if they could deliver 50,000 airplanes, made an outrageous claim: Ford Motor Company would erect a plant that could yield a bomber an hour.