"A revelatory new history of the birth of the automobile ... [a] true tale of invention, competition, and the visionaries, hustlers, and swindlers who came together to transform the world. In 1900, the Automobile Club of America sponsored the nation's first car show in New York's Madison Square Garden. The event was a spectacular success, attracting seventy exhibitors and nearly fifty thousand visitors. Among the spectators was an obscure would-be automaker named Henry Ford, who walked the floor speaking with designers and engineers, trying to gauge public enthusiasm for what was then a revolutionary invention. His conclusion: the automobile was going to be a fixture in American society, both in the city and on the farm-- and would make some people very rich. None, he decided, more than he. [This book] is the most complete account to date of the wild early days of the auto age ... [and] shows that the creation of the automobile was not the work of one man, but very much a global effort. ... With a narrative as propulsive as its subject, [the book] plunges us headlong into a time unlike any in history, when near-manic innovation, competition, and consumerist zeal coalesced to change the way the world moved."--