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Review
“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.†―The Boston Globe“Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed just such a marginal event. . . and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism. For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told. . . Fordlandia is precisely that--a genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist's sense of pace and an eye for character. It's a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.†―Timothy Rutten, The Los Angeles Times“Fascinating. . . Indeed, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness resonates through every page of this book. . . . a haunting story.†―The New York Times Book Review“Greg Grandin's riveting account of this 'forgotten jungle city' demonstrates that in business, as well as in affairs of state, the means may be abundant but the ends still unachievable.†―The Wall Street Journal“A sometimes horrifying, sometimes hilarious picture of the automaker's attempt to bring the light of American industry to the Amazonian heart of darkness . . . Grandin tells a marvelous tale.†―Star Tribune (Minneapolis)“Grandin, a distinguished historian of U.S. misadventures in Latin America, offers a fluently written, fair-minded guide to the Ford Motor Co.'s jungle escapades. In addition to his research in company records, he has ransacked the many Ford biographies to assemble a telling portrait of his central character.†―Brian Ladd, San Francisco Chronicle“Grandin offers the thoroughly remarkable story of Henry Ford's attempt, from the 1920s through 1945, to transform part of Brazil's Amazon River basin into a rubber plantation and eponymous American-style company town: Fordlandia. Grandin has found a fascinating vehicle to illuminate the many contradictions of Henry Ford. . . Readers may find it a cautionary tale for the 21st century.†―Publishers Weekly, starred review“Excellent history. . . Fordlandia is keenly and emotionally observed and a potent record of the last hundred years of economic thinking and U.S./South American relations in the form of a blunt blow to the head.†―M.E. Collins, The Chicago Sun-Times“Written with a flair and deftness that one might expect to find in a well-crafted novel. . . he brings to life the rogues and cranks who animate this tale. . . Excellent.†―The American Conservative“Fordlandia was, ultimately, the classic American parable of a failed Utopia, of soft dreams running aground on a hard world--which tends to make the most compelling tale of all. It's such an engrossing story that one wonders why it has never been told before in book-length form. Grandin takes full command of a complicated narrative with numerous threads, and the story spills out in precisely the right tone--about midway between Joseph Conrad and Evelyn Waugh.†―The American Scholar“An engaging and passionately written history. . . Grandin is alert to the tragedy and the unexpected moments of comedy in the story, which is at times reminiscent of both Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.†―Paul Maliszewski, Wilson Quarterly“Defines the old cliché that the truth is stranger than fiction. . . It is a masterful portrayal of capitalism and social paternalism unleashed to disastrous effect.†―Nancy Bass Wyden, The Daily Beast“Grandin's account is an epic tale of a clash between cultures, values, men, and nature.†―David Siegfried, Booklist“Stranger than fiction but with power of a first-rate novel to probe for the deepest truths, Fordlandia is an extraordinary story of American hubris. Out of the Amazon jungle, Greg Grandin brings us an unforgettable tale about the tragic limitations of a capitalist utopia.†―Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace“Greg Grandin's Fordlandia brings to light a fascinating but little known episode in the long history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. The auto magnate's experiment with a vast rubber plantation in the Brazilian jungle involved not only economic and ecological issues of the greatest importance, but a cultural crusade to export the American Way of Life. Grandin's penetrating, provocative analysis raises important questions about the complex impulses driving the global expansion of modern capitalism.†―Steven Watts, author of The Peoples Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century“Grandin places the Ford story within in a much broader social history of Amazonia, and rather than a saga of some novelty or the vanity of the rich, makes the resistance and the failure part of a larger Amazonian history rather than just the exotic ambitions of a man with too much money.†―Susanna Hecht, Professor, School of Public Affairs and Institute of the Environment and co-author of Defenders of the Forest“As a reader, I was fascinated by this account of Henry Ford's short-lived rainforest Utopia, complete with golf course and square dances. As a writer, I envy Greg Grandin for finding such an intriguing subject--whose decline and fall has an eerie resonance at our own historical moment today.†―Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost“Magic happens when a gifted historian and master storyteller finds a treasure trove of untapped materials to exploit. And Greg Grandin's book on Fordlandia is simply magical. Here is the truly epic tale of American adventurers dispatched by Henry Ford in 1928 to conquer and civilize the Amazon by constructing an industrial/agricultural utopia the size of Tennessee. Among the dozens of reasons I will be recommending Fordlandia to friends, family, colleagues, and students is the scale and pace of the narrative, the remarkable cast of characters, the brilliantly detailed descriptions of the Brazilian jungle, and what may be the best portrait we have of Henry Ford in his final years as he struggles to recapture control of the mighty forces he has unleashed.†―David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Andrew Carnegie
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About the Author
Greg Grandin is the author of Fordlandia, Empire's Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and the award-winning The Blood of Guatemala. An associate professor of Latin American history at New York University, and a Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, and The New York Times.
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Product details
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Picador; First edition (April 27, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312429622
ISBN-13: 978-0312429621
Product Dimensions:
5.3 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.1 out of 5 stars
153 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#75,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I saw Michael Palin reading this book on his not so recent series on Brazil (recommend that as well) and having seen his take on Fordlandia and another travel show venture there, I wanted to learn more.This book is about Henry Ford's failed experiment in Central Brazil to corner and use the rubber available for his eponymous cars in the 1920's and 30's. But this book is about more than that as I learned about Henry Ford himself and his company and vision. As cars have become a symbol of the earlier Twentieth Century (they aren't a wow item like in say 1928), Henry Ford and his massive contribution to American life has ceded into the mists of time. This great book reminds the reader of what he did.Fordlandia was his vision of putting the American suburbs in the Brazilian jungle. It didn't quite work for various reasons that this book details, but it is a fascinating journey. An excellent and well-written history. I found the book surprisingly well-written and easy to engage, wanting to read more and more. Trapped like I was on the river in the Heart of Darkness, waiting to discover Henry Ford at the end. Pleasant read and I learned quite a bit.
Yes Henry Ford created a city in the Amazon but the ideas and values that surrounded and supported his attempts at social engineering and the industrialization of nature are the most interesting and relevant parts of this book. We think the billionaire class is just greedy, but this glimpse into the ideals of the once richest man in America shows how unlimited wealth and hubris become married to blind indifference to individual rights, cultural diversity and the very fibers of life on earth. The rich saw the Amazon as both dangerous and boring. Nature was in the way of unlimited progress. Ford envisioned leveling it to create a Midwestern American paradise where local culture was replaced by square dancing and wholesome factory work gave everyone worth. While some of his ideas were praiseworthy, it was all done with a great deal of force and in the end the Amazon and his utter ignorance of agriculture, ecology and biological principles put an end to Fordlandia. I found many parallels between Ford and people like Bill Gates who confuses money with a PHD in Medicine and Education. Money does not make you God...it can make you deaf to good advice.
A very detailed, superbly researched and very well written history of the archetypal corporate blunder on a trans-continental scale. How a man's narrow-mindedness, lack of real humility (not the rural twang and corn-cob pipe variety), and total lack of respect for the ways of life of others (and the company ethic this produced) led to such a mess. It still happens today, but in a globalized economy there is less emphasis on internal procurement, now it is more employing child labor in Asia to keep costs down. Not enjoyable as light reading, it's too disturbing for that, but a fascinating story nonetheless.
Amazing look at the real Henry Ford, his personality as it played out in his various entrepreneurial pursuits. A major contributor to the industrial culture that was once prevalent in the U.S. Shows the split in his personality between his ideals and his actions. Composition of the book is scattered and unorganized. Many thoughts are repetitive; chronology is hard to track. I would have preferred a tighter chronology.
Henry ford, a self- made industrialist changed the world as much as his good friend Thomas Edison and anyone else in the early twentieth century. He spent the later part of his life trying to reshape his rural America back to a more pastoral era that his creation - an inexpensive car - did so much to destroy. In Brasil he tried to re-create his idolized version of small town farming community by creating a rubber plantation in the Amazon, in part to source this important automobile component through the ford family.The author is quick to discount the manner in which ford "blindly" set up the plantation, and the book would be stronger with more external verification of his claims. I do not doubt they are in part correct - just that they could be presented more convincingly.I enjoyed the book very much. Having been raised in Michigan, I already knew most of the ford history, and still think a visit to greenfield village is one of the highlights of American cultural history. Its lesson on how long it took manufacturers to re- design the workplace for electricity instead of steam has played out again in my lifetime as first personal computers and then the Internet have had similarly profound impact on how we work.This book added to that understanding. By pushing agriculture into the forest in an effort to better people's lives - as well as make money - ford was a pioneer in outsourcing. The lesson this failure taught was that trying to control the whole process just because you control most of it is often not as efficient as letting others do what they may be able do better than you. Ford himself learned this lesson can as he later bought rubber from s.e. Asia after the war. I suspect in fact he had several irons the fire with regards to sourcing.Towards the end of the book, we see in contrast that ford's failed idea later took root as some of the Amazon was ploughed over to plant his beloved soybean. Soy grown there that is now being used as he had foreseen in manufacturing. A good idea, germinating at the wrong time, may not bloom - but it is still a good idea. Henry ford was a complicated guy, and this book serves to shed light on only some part his life. But it does a good job telling a very interesting, somewhat prophetic story.
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