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.
Readability Test | Reading Level |
---|---|
Flesch Kincaid Scale | Grade 9 |
SMOG Index | Grade 11 |
Coleman Liau Index | Grade 11 |
Dale Chall Readability Score | Grade 7 |
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 | ||
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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 |
for The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip
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.