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- Format: Book Learn more about the Book format using Tower WIKI.
- ISBN: 0805082360
- WAPI (Tower ID): 113118761
- Release Date: June 9, 2009
- Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
- Tower.com Sales Rank: #3748 in Books (See Top 100 Books Bestsellers)
- #378 in Miscellaneous (See Top 100 Miscellaneous Bestsellers)
- #378 in Others (See Top 100 Others Bestsellers)
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Product DescriptionMore Books by Greg Grandin (Author)Run a Quick Search on "Fordlandia" by Greg Grandin to Browse Related Products:Browse more products related to "Fordlandia"Browse more products related to "Greg Grandin"Review"[E]ven if the world's remotest regions have been charted, there are stories about those places that remain unexplored. That's the thrill that historian Greg Grandin's...FORDLANDIA gives a reader: The all-too-rare thrill of discovery." "Grandin gives an exhaustive account of the project's failure and of the light it sheds on Ford..." "The story of Fordlandia is a biography of Ford in relief, the man who championed small-town America but did more to destroy it than any other, the pioneer who aimed to lift workers from drudgery but pioneered a method of soul-destroying mass production that rendered them mere cogs." "Greg Grandin...tells a gripping story of high hopes and deep failure, a saga that in some ways is a morality tale for the American century..." "[T]horoughly remarkable....Gandin has found a fascinating vehicle to illuminate the many contradictory parts of Henry Ford..." (starred review) Publisher's noteThis never-before-told story of the auto magnate's attempt to recreate small-town America, along with a rubber plantation, in the heart of the Amazon details the epic clash between Ford and the jungle and its inhabitants, as the tycoon attempted to force his will on the natural world. By the award-winning author of The Blood of Guatemala . 40,000 first printing. The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford's early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia's eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest. More than a parable of one man's arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, "Fordlandia" depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford's great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained. AnnotationIn this insightful examination of a neglected historical episode, Greg Grandin depicts Henry Ford's disastrous attempt to establish a rubber-producing settlement in the jungles of Brazil. While Ford's plan was initially motivated by purely economic reasons, it eventually swelled into an attempt to create a utopic society wherein industry and nature would coexist in perfect harmony. Unfortunately, only Ford himself got to decide the elements necessary to an idyllic existence, leading to absurd attempts to indulge the preindustrial natives with square dances and tennis courts. Adding to the lunacy was the fact that, as Ford continued to spend millions on his great social experiment, the price of rubber continuously plummeted, rendering the original intent of the settlement obsolete. If You Enjoy "Fordlandia (Book)", May We Also Recommend:
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