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. This work presents the story of the pride and arrogance of the man who thought he alone could tame the Amazon.
Greg Grandin is a professor of history at New York University and a Guggenheim fellow. He served on the United Nation's Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New Statesman and the New York Times. His previous book was Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism.
'Fordlandia' by Greg Grandin, is about Henry Ford's doomed attempt
to build a rubber plantation in the Amazon. It's an incredible
story, and one which has many lessons (still unlearnt) about how
the northern hemisphere misunderstands South America.
*Alex Bellos*
The story of Ford's not-so-excellent adventure in the jungle is a
writer's dream and Greg Grandin takes full advantage of its
dramatic potential...Grandin's assessment of Ford is by turns
critical and sympathetic, but always subtle.
*London Review of Books*
Henry Ford's vast project of building a city in the Amazonian
jungle to provide his car factories with a reliable supply of
rubber was greeted as a heroic civilizing mission when it started,
and damned as catastrophic Western hubris when it failed. The saga
remains an irresistible parable, both tragic and comic. I cannot
stop thinking of Ford's homesick managers staring glumly at the
vultures overhead and dreaming of the pigeons back in Detroit. Greg
Grandin's wonderful 'Fordlandia' (Icon) is alive to every nuance of
the story but is sparing with the condescension of posterity,
reminding us that Brazil's own loggers and soy farmers are
ploughing the same cruel furrows today.
*TLS*
Well written account of a forgotten chapter of industrial
history...Grandin effectively underscores how Fordlandia is also
the story of Ford's own contradictions - and by extension, those of
the modern world...
*Times Literary Supplement*
An absorbing account of the forgotten jungle venture ... Grandin
tells the story of Ford's hubris with great skill and panache. His
book works both as a gripping narrative of extraordinary events and
as a telling fable of a dream destroyed by harsh realities.
*Nick Rennison, Waterstones Books Quarterly*
A case history combining some of the tragic elements of Joseph
Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' alongside the naïve innocence of Conan
Doyle's The Lost World.... An extraordinary tale of pride and
stubbornness, a struggle on behalf of capitalism by a man who was
convinced that industrialisation had given him the strength and
know-how to bring even a mighty river like the Amazon to heel.
*Daily Telegraph*
Greg Grandin's compelling new book [is] both a merciless exposé of
misplaced idealism and a detailed study of the economic forces
behind it.
*Guardian*
Grandin's generous, pin-sharp book ... is, above all, a tale of
Ozymandian hubris.
*Sunday Times*
Grandin has a fine time excavating the collapsed ruins of a
corrupted dream.
*Times*
An amazing story, brilliantly told. 10/10
*Press Association*
Thoroughly researched and carefully written.
*Andrew Anthony, Observer*
The story is a gift to any writer and Grandin tells it with an easy
wit and academic rigour.
*Hugh Thomson, Independent*
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 pas 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, Los Angeles Times*
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, author of ‘Andrew Carnegie’*
'Fordlandia' brings to light a fascinating but little known episode
in the long history of Henry Ford. His 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 analysis is penetrating, provocative, and raises
crucial questions.
*Steven Watts, author of ‘The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the
American Century’*
Stranger than fiction but with the power of a first-rate novel to
probe for the deepest truths, 'Fordlandia' is an extraordinary
story of American hubris... an unforgettable tale about the tragic
limitations of an industrial utopia.
*Steve Fraser, author of 'Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace'*
As a reader, I was fascinated by this account of Henry Ford's
short-lived rain-forest 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.
*Adam Hochschild, author of 'King Leopold’s Ghost'*
In placing the Ford story within in a broad social history of
Amazonia, Grandin has given us something much more important than
the saga of some novelty or of the exotic ambitions of a man with
too much money.
*Susanna Hecht, author of 'Defenders of the Forest'*
For all of his grand accomplishments, Henry Ford had equally
spectacular boondoggles. Historian Greg Grandin brilliantly
recounts Ford's failed experiments in building a utopian community
deep in the Amazon Basin. Highly recommended!
*Douglas Brinkley, author of ‘Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His
Company, and a Century of Progress’*
Proving that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, Fordlandia
is the story of Henry Ford's ill-advised attempt to transform raw
Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana. With sales
of his Model-T booming, the automotive tycoon saw an opportunity to
expand ...
*Amazon Best of the Month*
Rich and frequently hilarious.
*Sunday Times*
The intriguing story of the forgotten city deep in the Brazilian
Amazon where Henry Ford planned to build a utopian settlement: an
America in his own image. He spent a fortune on the project but
never set foot there, and soon it was abandoned in ruins.
*Bookseller*
Fordlandia is both fascinating and beyond fiction'
'This story of a man's battle to conquer nature and his own desires
still resonates today'
'Grandin has written a gem of a book- perfect material for a Werner
Herzog film
*Bookseller’s choice*
Grandin's research is filled with novelistic detours that keep the
'Fordlandia' story enthralling despite the slow death the city
experienced.
*Mike Pursley, Fortean Times*
"The fate of Ford's prehab city in Brazil, vividly described in
this definitive account, holds a stark warning for today's
proponents of 'Charter cities.'"
'It's a safe bet there won't be a more definitive account'
*Andrew Antony, Observer*
The book is filled with amazing asides and unbelievable stories,
and paints a picture of a man who changed the way we live and
work.
*Robert Dex, Press Association*
The car manufacturer Henry Ford dominates this remarkable book,
managing, like Falstaff, to be its tragic hero, villain, and comic
relief all at the same time.'
'This is an extraordinary story, crisply told, its teller aghast
throughout.
*Spectator*
Nothing demonstrates the eccentricity more than 'Fordlandia.'
*Hugh Thomson, Independent*
The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to
recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon
*Good reads*
'Fordlandia' is a wonderful primer on Henry Ford - a deeply
contradictory and confusing person if ever there was
one...'Fordlandia' is everything that a popular history book should
be - and in a thought-provoking epilogue, Grandin lays out the
realities of the Amazon's current plight, in the context of which,
Ford's interventions look like small beer indeed.
*Simon Appleby, Book Geeks*
It combines readability with detailed research.
*The BookBag*
The book is illustrated throughout with contemporary photographs
from 'Fordlandia.' I much appreciated these because without them I
might have been tempted to doubt some of the more incredible
stories told in these unusual book...
*Common Reader*
I found this a fascinating book. Greg Grandin skilfully blends
company history and personal stories to create a very readable
account of this almost unbelievable industrial hubris.
*Common Reader*
Grandin is an excellent companion for a trip into the jungle;
'Fordlandia' has solid notes throughout and is indicative of not
only the author's depth of research but also of his ability to tell
a story.
*Keith Ruffles, The Daily Rant*
Grandin is a historian of Latin America, and that area is where he
shines - telling of the relationship of Ford with Brazilian
politicians, the rise and fall of the rubber-tapper economy and the
nonindustrial culture of the Brazilian workers.
*Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times*
The story, in a gifted writer's hands, is an epic cultural clash,
now almost entirely forgotten.
*Brian Bethune, Macleans*
Works both as a nice bit of recovered history and a parable.
*Kirkus Reviews*
With Fordlandia, Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York
University, tells a haunting story that falls squarely into this
tradition: Henry's Ford's failed endeavor to export Main Street
America to the jungles of Brazil.
*Ben Macintyre, 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.
*Stuart Ferguson, Wall Street Journal*
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, when scores of efforts to plant our values and
harvest foreign dollars brought disappointment, sometimes even
despair.
*David M. Shribman, Boston Sunday Globe*
Grandin gives an exhaustive account of the project's failure and of
the light it sheds on Ford.
*New Yorker*
Thoroughly researched account of Ford's ill-fated Amazonian rubber
plantation.
*Aaron Leitko, Washington Post*
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*
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, Chicago Sun-Times*
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.
*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' (1902) and Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn' (1884).
*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, Daily Beast*
Grandin's account is an epic tale of a clash between cultures,
values, men, and nature.
*David Siegfried, Booklist*
'Fordlandia' by Greg Grandin, is about Henry Ford's doomed attempt
to build a rubber plantation in the Amazon. It's an incredible
story, and one which has many lessons (still unlearnt) about how
the northern hemisphere misunderstands South America. -- Alex
Bellos
The story of Ford's not-so-excellent adventure in the jungle is a
writer's dream and Greg Grandin takes full advantage of its
dramatic potential...Grandin's assessment of Ford is by turns
critical and sympathetic, but always subtle. -- London Review of
Books
Henry Ford's vast project of building a city in the Amazonian
jungle to provide his car factories with a reliable supply of
rubber was greeted as a heroic civilizing mission when it started,
and damned as catastrophic Western hubris when it failed. The saga
remains an irresistible parable, both tragic and comic. I cannot
stop thinking of Ford's homesick managers staring glumly at the
vultures overhead and dreaming of the pigeons back in Detroit. Greg
Grandin's wonderful 'Fordlandia' (Icon) is alive to every nuance of
the story but is sparing with the condescension of posterity,
reminding us that Brazil's own loggers and soy farmers are
ploughing the same cruel furrows today. -- TLS
Well written account of a forgotten chapter of industrial
history...Grandin effectively underscores how Fordlandia is also
the story of Ford's own contradictions - and by extension, those of
the modern world... -- Times Literary Supplement
An absorbing account of the forgotten jungle venture ... Grandin
tells the story of Ford's hubris with great skill and panache. His
book works both as a gripping narrative of extraordinary events and
as a telling fable of a dream destroyed by harsh realities. -- Nick
Rennison, Waterstones Books Quarterly
A case history combining some of the tragic elements of Joseph
Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' alongside the naive innocence of Conan
Doyle's The Lost World.... An extraordinary tale of pride and
stubbornness, a struggle on behalf of capitalism by a man who was
convinced that industrialisation had given him the strength and
know-how to bring even a mighty river like the Amazon to heel. --
Daily Telegraph
Greg Grandin's compelling new book [is] both a merciless expose of
misplaced idealism and a detailed study of the economic forces
behind it. -- Guardian
Grandin's generous, pin-sharp book ... is, above all, a tale of
Ozymandian hubris. -- Sunday Times
Grandin has a fine time excavating the collapsed ruins of a
corrupted dream. -- Times
An amazing story, brilliantly told. 10/10 -- Press Association
Thoroughly researched and carefully written. -- Andrew Anthony,
Observer
The story is a gift to any writer and Grandin tells it with an easy
wit and academic rigour. -- Hugh Thomson, Independent
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 pas 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, Los Angeles Times
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, author of 'Andrew Carnegie'
'Fordlandia' brings to light a fascinating but little known episode
in the long history of Henry Ford. His 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 analysis is penetrating, provocative, and raises
crucial questions. -- Steven Watts, author of 'The People's Tycoon:
Henry Ford and the American Century'
Stranger than fiction but with the power of a first-rate novel to
probe for the deepest truths, 'Fordlandia' is an extraordinary
story of American hubris... an unforgettable tale about the tragic
limitations of an industrial utopia. -- Steve Fraser, author of
'Wall Street: America's Dream Palace'
As a reader, I was fascinated by this account of Henry Ford's
short-lived rain-forest 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. -- Adam Hochschild, author of 'King
Leopold's Ghost'
In placing the Ford story within in a broad social history of
Amazonia, Grandin has given us something much more important than
the saga of some novelty or of the exotic ambitions of a man with
too much money. -- Susanna Hecht, author of 'Defenders of the
Forest'
For all of his grand accomplishments, Henry Ford had equally
spectacular boondoggles. Historian Greg Grandin brilliantly
recounts Ford's failed experiments in building a utopian community
deep in the Amazon Basin. Highly recommended! -- Douglas Brinkley,
author of 'Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a
Century of Progress'
Proving that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, Fordlandia
is the story of Henry Ford's ill-advised attempt to transform raw
Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana. With sales
of his Model-T booming, the automotive tycoon saw an opportunity to
expand ... -- Amazon Best of the Month
Rich and frequently hilarious. -- Sunday Times
The intriguing story of the forgotten city deep in the Brazilian
Amazon where Henry Ford planned to build a utopian settlement: an
America in his own image. He spent a fortune on the project but
never set foot there, and soon it was abandoned in ruins. --
Bookseller
Fordlandia is both fascinating and beyond fiction'
'This story of a man's battle to conquer nature and his own desires
still resonates today'
'Grandin has written a gem of a book- perfect material for a Werner
Herzog film
"The fate of Ford's prehab city in Brazil, vividly described in
this definitive account, holds a stark warning for today's
proponents of 'Charter cities.'"
'It's a safe bet there won't be a more definitive account'
The car manufacturer Henry Ford dominates this remarkable book,
managing, like Falstaff, to be its tragic hero, villain, and comic
relief all at the same time.'
'This is an extraordinary story, crisply told, its teller aghast
throughout.
Gandin, an NYU professor of Latin American history, 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. Gandin has found a fascinating vehicle to illuminate the many contradictory parts of Henry Ford: the pacifist, the internationalist, the virulent anti-Semite, the $5-a-day friend of the workingman, the anti-union crusader, the man who ushered America into the industrial age yet rejected the social changes that followed urbanization. Both infuriating and fascinating, Ford is only a piece of the Fordlandia story. The follies of colonialism and the testing of the belief that the Amazon-where "7,882 organisms could be found on any given five square miles"-could be made to produce rubber with the reliability of an auto assembly line makes a surprisingly dramatic tale. Although readers know that Fordlandia will return to the jungle, the unfolding of this unprecedented experiment is compelling. Grandin concludes that "Fordlandia represents in crystalline form the utopianism that powered Fordism-and by extension Americanism." Readers may find it a cautionary tale for the 21st century. 54 b&w photos. (June) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
