The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

Reading Level
Grade 12
Time to Read
5 hrs 56 mins

Reading Level

What is the reading level of The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip?

Analysing the books in the series, we estimate that the reading level of The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip is 11th and 12th grade.

Expert Readability Tests for
The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

Readability Test Reading Level
Flesch Kincaid Scale Grade 9
SMOG Index Grade 11
Coleman Liau Index Grade 11
Dale Chall Readability Score Grade 7

Reading Time

5 hrs 56 mins

How long to read The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip?

The estimated word count of The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip is 88,970 words.

A person reading at the average speed of 250 words/min, will finish the book in 5 hrs 56 mins. At a slower speed of 150 words/min, they will finish it in 9 hrs 54 mins. At a faster speed of 450 words/min, they will finish it in 3 hrs 18 mins.

The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip - 88,970 words
Reading Speed Time to Read
Slow 150 words/min 9 hrs 54 mins
Average 250 words/min 5 hrs 56 mins
Fast 450 words/min 3 hrs 18 mins
The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn
Authors
Jeff Guinn

More about The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

88,970 words

Word Count

for The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

320 pages

Pages
Hardcover: 320 pages
Paperback: 320 pages

9 hours and 34 minutes

Audiobook length


Description

A “fascinating slice of rarely considered American history” (Booklist)—the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life.In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.