Born in Hollywood when it was a dirt road village, Harley Earl grew up with Los Angeles, working in his father's carriage shop and custom building sleek, racy-looking automobiles for the fast crowd in the silent movie business. Returning to his family roots in Michigan, he made styling a key component of auto production at General Motors. Earl didn't just introduce clay modeling, show cars, wraparound windshields, hardtop sedans, factory two-tone paint, and tailfins to Detroit; he precipitated a profound shift in how cars were designed and marketed, and in William Knoedelseder's Fins his career offers a panoramic window into the coming of age of American industry.