Our Recommended Reading for Children & Young Adults and Recommended Reading for Adults articles have been popular resources for readers interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie. Here is a brief overview of Henry Ford’s Own Story: How a Farmer Boy Rose to the Power That Goes With Many Millions, Yet Never Lost Touch With Humanity, As Told to Rose Wilder Lane.

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Author: Rose Wilder Lane
Publisher: Echo Library (September 1, 2014)

Synopsis:
“Fifty-two years ago a few farmers’ families near Greenfield, Michigan, heard that there was another baby at the Fords’—a boy. Mother and son were doing well. They were going to name the boy Henry. Twenty-six years later a little neighborhood on the edge of Detroit was amused to hear that the man Ford who had just built the little white house on the corner had a notion that he could invent something. He was always puttering away in the old shed back of the house. Sometimes he worked all night there. The neighbors saw the light burning through the cracks. Twelve years ago half a dozen men in Detroit were actually driving the Ford automobile about the streets. Ford had started a small factory, with a dozen mechanics, and was buying material. It was freely predicted that the venture would never come to much. Last year—January, 1914—America was startled by an announcement from the Ford factory that ten million dollars would be divided among the eighteen thousand employees as their share of the company’s profits. Henry Ford was a multimillionaire, and America regarded him with awe. Mankind must have its hero.” [Excerpt from Foreward of Henry Ford’s Own Story].

About the Author: Rose Wilder Lane
Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968), was a prolific fiction writer, biographer and political theorist, as well as the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series of children’s books. Lane’s skillful editing and publishing connections assisted her mother in making the transition from rural Ozark journalist to world-renowned children’s author. Lane had left her parent’s impoverished Missouri farm at the age of 17 and soon began to make her mark on the world. After a stint as a Western Union telegrapher, she sold real estate in California and later began a successful career as a reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin. Her 1918 divorce from Gillette Lane, after several years of separation, officially ended a relationship that had never recovered from the death of an infant son around 1910. She never remarried. After her divorce, Lane continued to carve out a successful career as a writer of novels, short stories, biographies and tales of her extensive world travels. Her work as a war correspondent dated from post-WWI Europe to a tour of Vietnam in 1965 (when she was nearly 80 years old). She was a well-known literary figure of her day. Later in life, Lane’s writing focused on her increasing political conservatism, her distaste of Communism, Socialism and any other form of government that denied the freedom of the individual. She is widely regarded as one of the leading figures behind what has grown into the American Libertarian Party. Among her many works are Free Land, Young Pioneers, Diverging Roads, and Give Me Liberty.

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