The story of the Selden patent is a largely forgotten episode of American business history past, particularly in comparison to the place occupied by Henry Ford in the historical landscape. Yet it remains a signal event in the evolution of modern American business, technology, law, and the automobile industry in particular. It is also central to the story of Ford's success in shaping how the industry evolved. In its broad strokes, the story goes something like this: In the late 1870s, George Selden—a Rochester, New York, patent lawyer and tinkerer—produced a design for a gasoline-powered automobile, though he never actually produced a working version of the car himself. The patent, first filed in 1879, sat for a few years gathering dust as Selden continually tweaked his design and as technology, on both sides of the Atlantic, caught up to the idea of the automobile. Selden was finally granted his patent in 1895; eventually, it came under the control of a consortium of car companies, the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM), which demanded a license fee for every car produced by the many “independent” manufacturers that were getting in on the business.

This is where Henry Ford comes in. By the early 1900s, Ford was but one of the many independents who were not part of the consortium and to whom the notion of paying others for the right to sell his company's cars was offensive. With James Couzens, his business manager, Ford stubbornly refused to join the consortium; when he was sued by ALAM in 1903 for patent infringement, Ford fought to break the “trust,” as he called it, both in court and in the court of public opinion. Eventually, after eight years of legal wrangling—which included the actual construction of an unworkable Selden machine—Ford won his case, becoming something of a folk hero for defeating the attempt by the Selden patent owners to create an auto industry monopoly. By that time, Ford was the largest automobile manufacturer in America and the Model-T was about to take off, which would forever change society and make Ford the world's wealthiest man. More a symbolic public relations victory for Ford's “everyman” persona and his vision of the auto industry than an important legal case, the Selden patent was due to expire in 1912.

Drive does cover the Selden case and its twists and turns, though curiously almost only in passing. Indeed, while the title of the book indicates that the Selden story will be the central framing of the narrative, this is not really the case. Instead, readers are treated to three parallel veins of historical storytelling: the patent case itself, often not at center stage in the overall tale; the growth of the industry, particularly the role of European inventors in advancing automobile technology; and the emergence of car culture in the United States and Europe, especially auto racing. All three threads obviously overlap and converge at points, but the latter two are not directly related to the Selden case and act as more of a filling out of the overarching story of the automobile and its impact at the dawn of motordom.

If there is an argument in the book, it is more implied than explicit and is multifold. First, Goldstone seems to be attempting to rehabilitate Selden the individual and his place in history, though it is not clear, historiographically speaking, if enough of a Selden profile exists—in any capacity, positive or negative—for him to be resurrected as a “good guy.” Second, Goldstone tackles the oft-utilized trope of diminishing Ford's genius and his overstated place in the industry's emergence, often impelled by Ford himself and his biographers. Goldstone makes it clear that Ford did not create the assembly line, had less to do with the early designs of the cars than is usually thought, did not himself discover or initially realize the importance of vanadium steel, did not come up with the five-dollar day, and was really nothing without his financial genius, Couzens. On this point, Ford's many foibles are well known by now, so minimizing his accomplishments seems a prosaic pursuit. In any event, no matter the details of his particular contributions and whether or not they can be held up to historical scrutiny, ultimately it is difficult to make the case, even with all the warts, that Ford was not the central figure in shaping the modern auto industry. Finally, the book attempts to remind American readers just how important European innovation was in the auto industry story, which Goldstone ably demonstrates.

The book is accessible and lively, and the writing is snappy and fast-paced, though at points the subject matter seems to veer far afield from either Selden or Ford—is it necessary to go into so much detail about early cross-country car tours, or European auto races? Methodologically, the book is aimed more at a popular audience than an academic one, as most of the author's research is based on newspapers and journals, with little archival material; also, there is no deep assessment of the copious secondary literature on the auto industry, Ford, or legal history. Indeed, with its popular bent, Drive might have contrasted the legal battles that marked the dawn of the internal combustion engine with Elon Musk—our generation's Henry Ford—and his willingness to give away his own battery technology patents. That would have made an interesting book even more useful, to both general readers and historians.