Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit Audiobook (Free)

The New York Times bestselling author of Bitter Brew chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the remarkable life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and continued to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized just how cars were made, marketed, and even imagined.

Harleys Earl’s story qualifies like a real American family members saga. It started in the Michigan pine forest in the years about Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, as well as the Glory Days of Detroit after the Civil Battle, traveled across the Great Plains in the solid wood wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in a dirt road village named Hollywood, California, where youthful Harley took the skills he learned working in his father’s carriage shop and applied these to designing smooth, racy-looking automobile physiques for the fast masses in the burgeoning silent movie business.

As the 1920s roared with the sound of mass production, Harley came back to Michigan, where, at GM’s invitation, he introduced art in to the rigid mechanics of auto-making. More than the next thirty years, he functioned as a kind of combination Steve Careers and Tom Ford of his time, redefining the form and function from the country’s top product. His influence was deep. When he retired as GM’s VP of Styling in 1958, Detroit reigned as the developing capitol of the world and General Motors ranked as the most successful business in the annals of business.

Knoedelseder tells the story in ways both large and small, weaving the history of the business with the history of Detroit and the Earl family members as Fins examines the effect of the auto on America’s overall economy, culture, and country wide psyche.