Greg Grandin

The 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 clash between Ford and the jungle and its inhabitants, as the tycoon attempted to force his will on the naturalworld.

The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Fordlandia

Than Tibbetts

Fordlandia is about as tangential a profile of a major American figure as one gets. Greg Grandin takes on the history of Fordlândia, an ill-fated attempt to wrestle the Amazon jungle into compliance with good, old-fashioned Midwestern manufacturing.1

This is the second Amazon-set profile I’ve read in the last year, the other being The Lost City of Z. Fordlandia doesn’t have the pace or the excitement of Z, but as a reflection on Americanism, at least as prescribed by Henry Ford, it holds its own.

Perhaps my favorite line in the book:

The term Fordism evolved after the Washington Post, condemning Ford in 1922 for briefly shutting down his factory rather than pay high coach prices, defined it as “Ford efforts conceived in disregard or ignorance of Ford limitations” […]

The project was a mess throughout its history, and one wonders if it was really at the top of the aging and fading Ford’s mind at all.

Fordlândia never exported any significant amounts of rubber, and Ford never visited the site.

Fordlandia The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Reviews