Snow, Richard

"By the early 1950s Walt Disney's great achievements in animation were behind him, and he was increasingly bored by the two-dimensional film medium. He wanted to work in three, to build an entirely new sort of amusement park, one that relied more on cinematic techniques than on thrill rides, one from which all tawdriness had been purged. He achieved it, but just barely: he ran out of money, had to borrow against his life insurance, fell out with his studio, frightened his family, and endured much ridicule. What he built was far more influential than is generally understood"--Provided by publisher.

"By the early 1950s Walt Disney's great achievements in animation were behind him, and he was increasingly bored by the two-dimensional film medium. He wanted to work in three, to build an entirely new sort of amusement park, one that relied more on cinematic techniques than on thrill rides, one from which all tawdriness had been purged. He achieved it, but just barely: he ran out of money, had to borrow against his life insurance, fell out with his studio, frightened his family, and endured much ridicule. What he built was far more influential than is generally understood"--Provided by publisher.

Henry Ford grew up as a Michigan farm boy who intuitively saw the advantages of internal combustion and built his first gasoline engine our of scavenged industrial scraps. When Ford began to build his first car, the Model T which transformed American industry, it took twelve and a half hours to build one car. A decade later it took exactly one minute. By making his car available for purchase by his workers, he created a cycle of consumerism that is still in practice today.

Explores the life of Henry Ford and the technological inventions that changed America during his lifetime, not least of which is his own Model T.