A Review of "My Forty Years with Ford" by Sorensen

Published August 2, 2023

“Appalling bad taste pervades this current book about a controversial American by an associate who helped him build an empire. Besides writing a scurrilous [calumny or making scandalous claims with the intention of damaging a person's reputation] hymn of hate, Sorensen has added a resounding, often embarrassing chorus of egomania.

“The title of one of the chapters is “I, Charles Sorensen.” This might indeed have been a far more appropriate title for the entire book. … Rousseau once had a few well-chosen words of his own for the pent-up feelings of ‘Henry Ford’s Man:’ ‘Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries [believers] credulous [showing too great a readiness to believe things].”

Anson Campbell, The Pittsburgh Press, 1956​

A Review of “My Forty Years with Ford” by Charles E. Sorensen / Samuel T. Williamson

• Reviews of the Day: 1956–57
• Selected Quotes from “My Forty Years with Ford”
• This Author’s Thoughts and Perceptions

Reviews of the Day: 1956–57

Releasing an updated biography on one of America’s most central, sometimes-polarizing, industrial figures is not an easy task. Being the last man standing and writing such a story, means that the few who are discussed in this book could not respond; the claims made in its sometimes grandiose stories will go unverified by the others who were in the room; therefore, a large number of contradictory reviews of the book are included here.

Sense the confusion and turmoil. Sorensen claimed that constant turmoil was Henry Ford’s “idea of harmony.” Maybe the “turmoil” reflected in these reviews of Sorensen’s work is also just as revealing of Sorensen's personality?
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Here are a few of the 1956–57  “Reviews of the Day.”

“It is not true that there are as many books about Henry Ford as there are cars which bear his name; it merely seems like it. … This is hardly an objective, definitive biography. … That does not mean that this book is without value. …

“One incident [Mrs. Ford changing her husband’s mind] among many adds to the picture of a great and strange man [Henry Ford]. For those who find business and the growth of industrial empires a fascinating study in Americana, ‘My Forty Years with Ford’ is a rewarding adventure.
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“Someday, perhaps, someone will take this and the other books about Ford, sift fact from prejudice and legend, and write the real story of the man from Detroit.”

W. W. Baker, “Light on Henry Ford,” The Kansas City Star,  November 1956

“Sorensen’s own blend of qualities makes his memoir, ‘My Forty Years with Ford’ a priceless document. … Henry Ford ‘wart and all.’  … In telling his story Sorensen demolishes many a myth about the origins of mass production. … The overall picture of Ford is one of a genius who would have been completely stifled in any other world beside the American. …

From the cover of ​​“My Forty Years with Ford.”

“The story of Sorensen’s final break with his old boss makes for some sad reading. But it undoubtedly belongs to the unvarnished history of the Ford Company. It is told with grace and understanding by a man who insists that Henry Ford was one of the greatest of Americans.”

 John Chamberlain, “30 Stormy Years with Ford,” The Sun-Times, November 1956

“Sorensen, who resigned from the company in 1944, has written more candidly and authoritatively about Henry Ford than any of his biographers; and if to some extent he debunks Ford, that could be compatible with the facts.”

H. L. M., “Ford’s Treatment of Edsel,” The Windsor Daily Star, December 1956

“Sorensen places all blame on Edsel Ford’s death on Bennett and Henry Ford. However, a close reading will disclose that Sorensen was the willing agent of the father in frustrating some of Edsel’s plans; possibly he never realized that he, too, contributed to this tragedy.
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“Sorensen certainly strives manfully here to make of himself a plaster saint. Whether the tens of thousands in the Detroit area who have other ideas will be influenced by this book is another matter.”

Charles C. Thompson, “Henry Ford’s Right-Hand Man,” The Chattanooga Daily Times, January 1957 

“The book is a revealing narrative about one of the strangest and most inspiring of men. … I knew Mr. Ford over a period of twenty years. I saw and talked with him intimately, and what I discovered was the kindly Henry Ford. He loved children and they loved him. …

“He loved the beginning of things. He liked to see things grow out of ideas. He believed we should help the other fellow to help himself. He liked simple things because they revealed themselves.

“Sorensen was affectionately tagged Cast-Iron Charlie.

​"They were both stalwarts.”

George Matthew Adams, “The Kindly Henry Ford,” The Morning Herald, January 1957 

Selected Quotes from "My Forty Years with Ford"

• Sorensen on Designing Willow Run for World War II Bomber Production​

"Standing over the papers, I roughed out on note paper a pencil sketch of the floor plan of a bomber plant. It would be a mile long and a quarter mile wide, the biggest single industrial building ever. …​

“The result of one night’s hard work, it is the true outline of Willow Run, which took two years to build and came through on schedule with one four-engine Liberator an hour, 18 bombers a day, and by the end of the war a total of 8,800 big planes off the assembly lines and into the air.

“When I finished my sketch I went to bed, but was so carried away by enthusiasm for the project that I couldn’t sleep.
​
“I was building planes the rest of the night.”

The Willow Run plant was one of the greatest success stories of America’s entry into World War II.

• Sorensen on Henry Ford Traits

"He could not make a speech. His few attempts to talk to a group of people were pitiful.”

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“Henry Ford was opinionated in matters about which he knew little or nothing. He could be small-minded, suspicious, jealous, occasionally malicious, and lacking in sincerity. … He came close to wrecking the great organization he had built up. These were his defects. Taken by themselves, they were grave faults, and it might well be wondered how one could retain one’s self-respect and still serve such a man. But when weighed against his good qualities, his sense of responsibility, his exemplary personal life, and his far-reaching accomplishments, these defects become microscopic.”

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“The head of Ford was a single-purposed man who dominated yet at the same time delegated sweeping authority and responsibility.”

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“He was an individualist who arrived at conclusions—both right and wrong—by independent thought. … He said, ‘We most go ahead without the facts; we will learn them as we go along.’ ”

• Sorensen on Decentralized Corporate Management

“Good managers at Ford had to have some of these qualities: (1) Refreshing simplicity, (2) Brains, (3) Education, (4) Special technical ability, (5) Tact, (6) Energy and Grit, (7) Honesty, (8) Judgment, (9) Common sense, and (10) Good health. Men with four or five of these good qualities are rare; those with six or seven are almost nonexistent.
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“So, an organization needing all these qualities in the aggregate must make some division of the responsibility load. Division of the responsibility load and functional responsibility are the basis of today’s industrial management.

“They make possible the large-scale decentralization and specialization characteristic of modern American business.”

• Sorensen on the Value of Education and Making Hard Work, Play

“A man is doomed not by being uneducated but by remaining so. … It isn’t the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get into a position to destroy it. It is those who have achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up. To keep an industry thoroughly alive, it should be kept in perpetual ferment. ‘The art of government,’ said Napoleon, ‘is not to let men grow stale.’
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“Henry Ford didn’t let us grow stale.”

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“We at Ford Motor Company rarely selected a man entirely for what he knew. It was his capacity to learn, particularly the capacity to learn that about which he knew nothing. Proved competence in some field plus intellectual curiosity and audacity are to me essential qualities.

“The trick is to detect them.”

This Author’s Thoughts and Perceptions on "My Forty Years with Ford"

Henry Ford with ​William Richards, author of "The Last Billionaire."

The best chapters in this book are: “The Five Dollar Day,” “We Start the Rouge,” and “Farewell to the Model T.” Although these incidents are documented in the other books about Henry Ford, these accounts add color and provide a different perspective—although a more-than-little, self-serving perspective.
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This is the sixth book I have read concerning Henry Ford: (1) My Life and Work, (2) Today and Tomorrow, (3) Moving Forward, (4) 365 Henry Ford Sayings, and (5) The Last Billionaire. The first three were written in conjunction with Samuel Crowther—who is mentioned in this latest book. In my opinion, the last in this list is the best of the biographies at presenting a balanced perspective on Mr. Ford as a complete man within his day and time and balancing his eccentricities as both strengths and weaknesses [Reviews of Crowther’s books are here; The review of The Last Billionaire is here].

If Sorensen knew Henry Ford “as well as any man alive or dead” he left out the compassionate side of his chief executive and, maybe, in so doing reveals a weakness in himself. Sorensen either did not know, or did not write any of the human-interest stories of Mr. Ford that come across in the other biographies.

One example of an omission is that of a child killed by a Ford truck on a “town-line road feeding into an expressway from Detroit to the Willow Run Bomber plant.” ​

This was the plant that Mr. Sorensen designed, supervised, and ultimately claimed responsible for operating. The death shocked Henry Ford. He immediately worked with the county to resolve the problem—straighten out the road, that lead to the accident. It is one of the touching stories of the man and his eccentricities combined with his compassion and drive for action when needed.

​Nowhere in this book does a reader think of any of the individuals mentioned in it as “compassionate” men.

As evidenced by the information in the sidebar, it appears that Sorensen lacked compassion for his fellow workers, and was more concerned about how he should or should not act given his social surroundings.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence in the other works about Henry Ford’s eccentricities. He was at times an eccentric goofball, but he was also just as often a caring and compassionate human being.

Sorensen’s portrayal of Ford reads as a little self-serving if not almost vindictive. The stories told in this book concerning the last years of Henry Ford’s life—after multiple debilitating strokes, seemed callous, unsavory, and unsympathetic; but it also lent credence to views that a corporation needs a strong, reliable board of directors.

Henry Ford, sole owner of the Ford Corporation after buying out the other shareholders [Read Henry Ford Takes Control], had two strokes late in life. As should be expected, he had memory lapses and emotional and physical problems afterwards.

Sorensen’s management style was evaluated in  1948 in William Richards’ “The Last Billionaire.”

​If a competent board of directors had been in place, they would have found a way to reduce his influence on the corporation’s day-to-day operations. Instead, he continued even when in ill health and most-likely not of sound mind or body.

Overall, I enjoyed the book mainly because I had read five other books about Mr. Ford before this one. This is not a book from which to start any new research on “The Life and Times of Henry Ford.” There is too much of “I, Charlie Sorensen” in the book for my overall comfort to receive the information as gospel.

To describe this book, an old Shakespearean expression comes to mind:

To hoist oneself with one’s own petard.

Cheers,
​
- Peter E.

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