Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit
    Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit
    Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit
    Audiobook9 hours

    Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit

    Written by William Knoedelseder

    Narrated by Peter Berkrot

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    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 went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined.

    Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wooden wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in a dirt road village named Hollywood, California, where young Harley took the skills he learned working in his father’s carriage shop and applied them to designing sleek, racy-looking automobile bodies for the fast crowd in the burgeoning silent movie business.

    As the 1920s roared with the sound of mass manufacturing, Harley returned to Michigan, where, at GM’s invitation, he introduced art into the rigid mechanics of auto-making. Over the next thirty years, he functioned as a kind of combination Steve Jobs and Tom Ford of his time, redefining the form and function of the country’s premier product. His impact was profound. When he retired as GM’s VP of Styling in 1958, Detroit reigned as the manufacturing capitol of the world and General Motors ranked as the most successful company in the history of business.

    Knoedelseder tells the story in ways both large and small, weaving the history of the company with the history of Detroit and the Earl family as Fins examines the effect of the automobile on America’s economy, culture, and national psyche.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 18, 2018
    ISBN9780062564146
    Author

    William Knoedelseder

    William Knoedelseder is the New York Times bestselling author of Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America’s Kings of Beer, as well as the critically acclaimed Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia. His book I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy’s Golden Era is the basis for the Showtime series of the same name. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

    More audiobooks from William Knoedelseder

    Related to Fins

    Related audiobooks

    Industries For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Thumb-punching

      Jul 5, 2023

      Around 1910 the Germans all but gave up the intense naval construction race that they’d pushed against England’s dominant shipyards since the nineties. The Americans didn’t yet know that their own extremely costly Civil War had made them potentially

      3 min read

    • Article

      RUN the WORLD

      Jan 23, 2022

      RUN the WORLD
      3 min read

    • Article

      Cold War Hot Spots

      Oct 26, 2023

      Cold War Hot Spots
      5 min read

    • Article

      A History of Hamtramck

      Feb 19, 2019

      A History of Hamtramck
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Safest Building In The World

      Feb 24, 2020

      The Safest Building In The World
      13 min read

    • Article

      Sema 2022

      Jan 29, 2023

      Sema 2022
      2 min read

    • Article

      Infrastructure

      Apr 1, 2017

      Infrastructure
      10 min read

    • Article

      Nothing Is Guaranteed

      Jun 5, 2019

      I was once quite comfortable with the idea that speaking English conferred absolute advantages (beyond being able to demand aircraft landing instructions in that language, worldwide). Then, gradually, I discovered it was much more complicated. There

      3 min read

    • Article

      Chips Everywhere And With Everything

      May 31, 2023

      Economic prosperity and global power in the twentieth century were defined by oil. Today, economic growth and our very way of life are defined by silicon. Semiconductors that are thinner than a strand of human hair power everything from our electric

      6 min read

    • Article

      Where’s My Stuff?

      Nov 19, 2021

      AMERICANS CAN BE forgiven for thinking that every critical system we rely on is breaking down. The country—nay, the globe—has endured years of social, political, environmental, and epidemiological upheaval. Pick your shock: COVID-19, wildfires, Georg

      11 min read

    • Article

      Silicon Ally

      Oct 1, 2021

      Silicon Ally
      12 min read

    • Article

      Silicon Ally

      Oct 1, 2021

      Silicon Ally
      12 min read

    • Article

      Crittall Windows

      May 31, 2022

      Crittall Windows
      4 min read

    • Article

      Crittall Windows

      May 31, 2022

      Crittall Windows
      4 min read

    • Article

      Class of ’42

      Feb 9, 2020

      Class of ’42
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fins

    4.5/5

    23 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Interesting automotive history told from a Harley Earl as a protagonist point of view. A good read for any automobile fan.
    • 4/5
      Although I was afraid this would be something of a throwaway puff piece, Knoedelseder gives one an effective life and times of Harley Earl, the man who, for better or worse, made styling as important as engineering to mass-market American automobiles. As for the subtitles, for there to be a rise of General Motors, there had to be a fall of the Ford Motor Company, and business strategy is a strong secondary element of the story being told. As for the glory of Detroit, that barely lasted a generation, and justifies some of the sociological angles that the author explores in this book. If nothing else, I find a lot of car books undercut by their authors' uncritical enthusiasm for their subject, whereas Knoedelseder comes both to praise and critique in equal measure, as required. I really have no salient complaints about this work. For those who want more nuts and bolts, well, other books exist for that.