by A. J. Baime
First published 2014
A. J. Baime chronicles how Detroit transformed from automaker to aircraft producer during World War II. In 1941, President Roosevelt faced Hitler's growing threat and desperately needed airplanes to fight the Nazis. He turned to Detroit's auto industry for help. The story centers on Henry Ford and his son Edsel, who received an impossible request: could Ford Motor Company deliver 50,000 airplanes? Edsel made a bold promise that Ford would build a plant capable of producing a bomber every hour. Critics doubted the plan since Ford manufactured cars, not aircraft. Henry Ford resisted the idea, but Edsel pushed forward anyway. Ford would adapt assembly line methods to build America's largest, fastest, most destructive bomber. They constructed a massive facility called Willow Run on former farmland, bringing in tens of thousands of workers from across the nation. This effort transformed Detroit overnight from Motor City into the "great arsenal of democracy." Baime draws from extensive research in the Ford Archives, National Archives, and FDR Library to tell this story of American innovation, offering readers a vivid portrait of America and Detroit during wartime.
Genres: history, 20th-century, world-war-ii, non-fiction, military-history, american-history
Vibes: fast-paced, informative, thought-provoking
Tropes: against-all-odds, innovation, transformation
Setting: Detroit, Willow Run
Period: World War II, 1941
364 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt