Historian to present ‘The Business Innovators: Henry Ford to Jeff Bezos’ April 16

Douglas Brinkley, a historian and bestselling author, will present “The Business Innovators: Henry Ford to Jeff Bezos” April 16 as this year’s Rudolf G. Schade Lecture on History, Ethics and Law at Elmhurst University.

As Brinkley notes in his book “Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress,” the history of corporations and its relevance today often are neglected.

In this lecture, Brinkley will highlight the leaders who constantly have pushed for more — as well as the groups of ordinary and extraordinary people surrounding them — and who built America’s greatest companies. He compares his research about Ford, who shaped the 20th century, to the challenges and opportunities faced by Amazon founder Bezos and other corporate leaders shaping the 21st century.

Brinkley is the presidential historian for the New York Historical Society and is a frequent contributor to CBS News, CNN and MSNBC. He is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University. In 2022, he published “Silent Spring Revolution,” which chronicles the rise of environmental activism; his other books include New York Times bestseller “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race” and “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

The Rudolf G. Schade Lecture on History, Ethics and Law will begin at 7 p.m. April 16 in Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel, 190 Prospect Ave., Elmhurst. A book signing will follow the lecture, and copies of Brinkley’s books will be available for purchase.

Admission is $15, free for Elmhurst University students, faculty, staff and alumni. Tickets are available at elmhurst.edu/cultural.