This is corporate history with the top down—a breezy, upbeat, illustrated cruise through the 100 years since the first Ford Motor Company's incorporation and its release of the Model A in 1903. Banham, who has produced similar corporate histories (Coors: A Rocky Mountain Legend, etc.), skims past the historical context of the Ford Century, but the author skips none of the debit entries on Ford the man, not even his anti-Semitism and bouts of flinty noblesse oblige during the Depression, although he does avoid most of the company's labor-management potholes. After devoting much space to Henry Ford, Banham describes his successors, including Henry II, McNamara, Iacocca, Nasser. Most of these CEOs take a bow for globalizing Ford through acquisitions (Lincoln, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover) and for benchmarks in marketing and engineering, including the Edsel. Banham wisely pauses in the middle of this management hagiography and gives over the story to the cars themselves in an illustrated centerpiece of 25 "Heart and Soul" Fords (along with models from Volvo et al.)—most with marketing case summaries and social history. Studded with more than 500 images, including early photos of production lines, advertisements and the automobiles themselves, this volume is a nice road trip for Ford marque buffs, but on the whowle it comes off as a glossy, self-congratulating corporate history. (Nov.)
