Fordlandia

In 1927, Henry Ford, the founder of the famous motor company and the richest man in the world, bought a 5,000 square mile-tract of land in the Brazilian Amazon. There he was going to build a rubber plantation. To the unkempt rainforest he would bring the principles of mass production - order, efficiency and productivity. He would harness the river itself in order to transplant capitalist civilisation to the dark heart of the jungle. But Ford wanted more than just rubber. Across the United States, small-town America was giving way to growing cities, consumerism and crass, brash new society. Ford wanted to create in the Amazon an America in his own image - Fordlandia, full of neat houses, straight roads and restrained Puritanism. By 1945 it was abandoned in ruins. Fordlandia is the powerful, never-before-told fable of the pride and arrogance of the man who thought he alone could tame the Amazon.

Author: Greg Grandin 

Publisher: Icon

Released Date: 2010

ISBN: 9781848311473