The Vagabonds

May 27, 2019
In this quirky, intermittently engaging history, Guinn (The Road to Jonestown) argues that the American road trip was partially popularized as an oddball semivacation indulged in by two of the 20th century’s most famous inventors. Inspired by a 1915 drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison decided to take summer driving trips together for the next decade. Calling themselves “the Vagabonds” and often accompanied by their friends tire tycoon Harvey Firestone and curmudgeonly naturalist John Burroughs, they wanted to join “their countrymen’s burgeoning enthusiasm for gypsying in automobiles.” Wandering the countryside in a convoy filled with servants and supplies, they used the trips as much for pleasure as publicity, generating massive press coverage about the curious excursions of the famous millionaires who wanted to “demonstrate how much they had in common with other Americans.” Guinn uses the Vagabond trips as a vehicle for his profiles of Ford, Edison, and the shifting dynamics of the country their technological innovations radically transformed. Interspersed with the mostly dry anecdotes about the Vagabonds’ rambles are portraits of an America convulsed by mechanical wonders and isolationism, both of which were eagerly fed by the anti-Semitic Ford. It’s a thin premise for a book, but Guinn does present some pleasing kernels of American history.