Transcript
Introduction
In the 1940s, Henry J. Kaiser was a household name, as familiar then as Warren Buffett and Donald Trump are now. Kaiser rose from lower middle class origins to become an enormously wealthy entrepreneur, building roads, bridges, dams, and housing. He established giant businesses in cement, aluminum, chemicals, steel, health care, and tourism. During World War II, his company's built cargo planes and Liberty ships. After the war, he manufactured the Kaiser-Frazer Automobile. Along the way, he became a major force in the development of the Western United States, including Hawaii. Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West is the first biography of this remarkable man. Drawing on a wealth of archival material never evenhanded before utilized, Mark Foster paints an even-handed portrait of a man of driving ambition and integrity, perhaps the ultimate "can-do" capitalist.