A story about Ford and others who from 1914 through 1925 would travel through the United States looking at road conditions. part of this would go to help improve the and the tires since Firestone was one of the men along with Edison they would see the country but also talk about ways of improvement as well. A very good book.

This was a very interesting look into the birth of the road trip and the men who were largely responsible for it - Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (The Vagabonds). *3.5 stars*
I appreciated the opportunity to review an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a different kind of book for me than what I am usually used to reading but I really enjoyed the book and the story behind it. It was very well written and easy to follow along with characters. I recommend this to anyone and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

"The Vagabonds” tells the story of the birth of the road trip, the American yen to load the family in the car and hit the highway. Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford, a trio of inventors and industrialists spent a decade in the early 1900’s making annual road tours that popularized automobile camping. This book is social history at its best, exploring the relationships between the men, and setting their trips in the context of the history of the US at their time.

Book and Film Globe review
ARE WE THERE YET?
by Michael Giltz
Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were two of the most famous men in America in the early 1900s. And when they took summer vacations together for about a decade, it was headline news. Jeff Guinn documents these annual jaunts in his new nonfiction book The Vagabonds, which goes year by year in recounting the journey taken. He tells us who came along and assesses the general success of the outings. But he’s able to do this because, at the time, the national press documented these journeys just as carefully, as road trips gradually became an American obsession

I said “Henry Ford and Thomas Edison” but in the early days of their “automobiling” (the nickname for the novel idea of getting into a car and just going somewhere) it was almost always “Thomas Edison and Henry Ford” since Edison was initially even more famous.

The trips were a genuine desire for two men to get away, however briefly, from their business concerns. But it was also a canny bit of self-promotion for them, and especially for Ford’s trusty Model T. When they began in 1914 with an ill-advised foray into the Florida Everglades, paved roads were almost as much a novelty as automobiles. Summer vacations hadn’t really taken hold. Who could ever get far enough away and back again in a week or two?

Those bold enough to jump in a car and go automobiling were enterprising sorts who slept in their car on the side of a road (motels hadn’t been thought of yet either) or pitched tents in a farmer’s field and woke up with a shotgun in their face. If they were lucky, he gave them an offer to buy eggs and milk for a cheap price.

Edison and Ford pretended they were roughing, but the trips almost always included an elaborate entourage, stops in nice hotels, and more to soften the blow. Family did sometimes come along for the ride but the trips almost always included tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone and naturalist John Burroughs. They called themselves the Four Vagabonds.

Firestone was a hugely successful businessman in his own right, but the two giants saw him as little more than a factotum to arrange details, deal with the press and such. Burroughs was a naturalist they both admired who could offer detailed info on the flora and fauna they passed. He was also a grumpy old cuss. Between his harrumphing and Edison’s fitful desire to “rough it,” problems of one sort or another bedeviled almost every trip.

For all the free publicity the vagabonds garnered, the friendship between Edison and Ford was genuine. Neither man liked pretty much anyone. Plus they were so wealthy and powerful that everyone they came into contact with seemed to want something. Well, Ford was richer than Edison by a mile, so he didn’t want money. And he’d begun in Edison’s labs and admired the inventor tremendously, so that was all right with Edison and they got along fine.

Guinn uses the narrative of these trips from 1914 to 1925 to tell the story of Ford and Edison’s lives, going chapter by chapter and trip by trip to illuminate the radical impact of the automobile and posit some fascinating what-ifs. Presidents Harding and Coolidge each joined the Vagabonds on their sojourns at one point. And Ford’s vehement opposition to World War I might well have been a launching pad for the anti-Semitic automaker’s Presidential bid if his hesitancy and a wary wife didn’t put the kibosh on that.

Ultimately, few of the trips were particularly fun for the people involved, thanks to bad weather, ill-tempered companions, mechanical failure, a too-eager press tagging along, and a thousand other reasons, with the blame usually laid at the feet of poor, beleaguered Firestone.

Often someone else’s bad vacation can make for a good story. But given the outsized importance of the men involved, Guinn seems just as harried as Firestone. Rather than satisfying my interest in the men or their misadventures, it makes me look forward more eagerly to Edmund Morris’s posthumous biography of the inventor due out in October.

It’s not Guinn’s fault each individual trip seems anti-climactic and repetitive. Yet after hearing about five or six of them in a row you start tapping your toes and wondering impatiently if we’re there yet. But in this fitfully engaging, dutiful narrative, we never quite arrive.

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A big Thank You to Simon & Schuster and Net Galley for the chance to read and review this book! I
I can't say enough about this wonderful book. It is based on the travels of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John Burroughs and Harvey Firestone. For several years, they would all get together once a year and take a vacation. This book is much more than a narrative of their travels though. It explores the relationship of all of these powerful men as well as letting the reader know what was going on in the world during this time. The author also explains how the state of the country influenced these men and their views of the world. I have been to the Ford museum in Michigan, and it was just wonderful to read about how and why Henry Ford started it. This book is just fantastic! Please read it! You will love it! I hope the author writes more books like this one!

As someone who loves s a "road trip," I enjoyed Jeff Guinn's non-fiction account of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone's travels in the early days of the automobile. Coming from Detroit, the Ford family looms large in that city in both a business and social sense, but I was not really aware of the extent of Ford's ingenuity in the public relations field.

THE VAGABONDS is a social history, a business history, and a personal history of the three business pioneers and the tale is crafted around their summer excursions. The most fascinating element of the story to me is that these self-made men were so adept at manipulating the news media (and the American public) by promoting their businesses through their frequent "buddy trips" around the country. Ford may have been uneducated, bigoted, and narrow-minded in many ways, but he saw very clearly the value of presenting himself to the country as "just folks" and the adventures of The Vagabonds were conceived to burnish that image.

Jeff Guinn has written an informative, but readable, book on a narrow facet of the lives of three important Americans and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and learning about this facet of American history.

This gives more insight into the personalities of Edison and Ford by documenting their leisure time.

I like Guinn. He is both a novelist of the old west and an excellent writer of social history. This book which recounts the early automobile travel of the vagabonds(Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone) is a fascinating slice of history I knew nothing about. Good portraits of thee Vagabonds in the context of the political and social history of the late teens and early twenties of the 20th century and the growth of the automobile, motels, and travel. I really enjoyed this book—particularly learning about iconic figures of the 20th century in a new context. Well written as well. Highly recommended.