In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They continued the summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, they also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America's roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Guinn shares the story of these pivotal moments in American history, and shows how the trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford's reputation, even as Edison's diminished. -- adapted from jacket