CRP's Blog

Polymath Ronald A. Reis, author of the forthcoming Henry Ford for Kids, likes to keep busy. The prolific educator has taught middle schoolers, high schoolers, and community college students, and he’s written books about architecture and infrastructure, governmental bodies, electrical engineering, and historical figures—including Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration for Kids and The US Congress for Kids. Recently he sat down with us for a quick chat about the books that have inspired him.

So, given the range of topics you’ve written about so far, what’s a topic you’d like to write about that you haven’t yet?

While I have found writing about history and the like enjoyable, I find myself gravitating more to the technical again. For now, I am going to take a break from writing for publication. I need time away.

Henry Ford for Kids is your third “For Kids” book for Chicago Review Press. What books did you read during your research for it?

If there are definitive works on Henry Ford, the two massive volumes written by Allan Nevins, in the 1950s, remain the gold standard. I read both from cover to cover. Steven Watts’s The People’s Tycoon and Robert Lacey’s Ford: The Men and the Machine were valuable reads, too. In all, I read at least a dozen books on Henry Ford, plus, of course, all the Internet searching.

What’s the last book you canceled your plans to keep reading?

I have been reading Jürgen Osterhammel’s The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. It is a thousand pages, no art of any kind, small type. The book is wonderful, but I have, at times, been tempted to put it aside. I doubt I will take on such an extensive, one-subject read again any time soon.

Literary confession time: What’s a book you’ve faked reading?

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. I couldn’t get beyond a dozen pages. My fault, not the author’s.

What’s your guilty pleasure/I-can’t-believe-I-read-that book?

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. There is irony in the title; I did, indeed, find them “just so.”

What’s the best book people have probably never read?

I highly recommend Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert D. Putnam. There is significance here for anyone, no matter what their political bent.

What five people—living, dead, fiction, nonfiction—would you have over for your dream dinner?

Albert Einstein, Agatha Christie, Simon Winchester, Pope Francis, and my friend, and author, William Wallis.

What are you reading now, and what’s next on your to-be-read pile?

I am currently reading London Fog: The Biography by Christine L. Corton. I am a member of The Folio Society and am looking forward to my next book from them, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

-compiled by Geoff George

Henry Ford for Kids officially publishes on January 1, 2016. It will be available everywhere books are sold, including our website.

Kirkus Reviews calls it “a perceptive character study of one of this country’s most influential and iconic figures,” saying “Budding engineers and inventors as well as students of American history will find plenty of food for both thought and reflection here.”