Fascinating tale of Henry Ford's attempt to create a model city for harvesting rubber in the Amazon based on a typical midwestern US city, without the aid of experts. Good for people who like interesting non-fiction with a historical/cultural bent.

Incredibly fascinating account of Ford's failed attempt at growing his own rubber and establishing his vision of an ideal community in the Amazon. For such a game-changing and influential man, he certainly lived in his own (crazy, absurd) reality!

Hmm. At times, I really liked this story of the Ford Motor Company's Brazil rubber plantation--it is an interesting story, well told. The management and other problems that plagued the plantation make for good reading. What I have a hard time swallowing is author Grandin's assertion that the story proves somehow that capitalism is bad. This really isn't a story about capitalism, even. I'm puzzled at many of the author's assertions. For example, the author seems to believe that because parts of consumer goods are produced in different countries, that means that "there is no relationship . . . between wages(paid) to make products. . . and profits received from selling them." Huh? He also says that trying to produce goods cheaply produces "a race to the bottom, a system of perpetual deindustrialization"
In all the railing against "capitalism" the author never once defines the term or what he means by the term, simply applying it to anything he does not like.
Then there is the interesting assertion that Ford employees were once some of the highest paid in the world but now make a fraction of what they made thirty years ago. Come again? Perhaps the author would care to spell out exactly what criteria he used to come up with this? I can only guess at what he means by this as he does not spell it out. Does he take into account inflation? Productivity? Comparisons with other workers in other countries in inflation-controlled units? Perhaps the author needs some coursework in economics or economic writing. It's too bad the last chapter sort of spoiled the much stronger body of the book where the author just told what happened without editorializing.

Not enough narrative. Slim on details about the lives of the workers.

Henry Ford, architect of the modern industrial system, was a complex man of stark contrasts. He instituted a $5 a day wage for his workers (very high for the day) and set up social programs to care for them and their families. He also sent thugs to break up any attempt to organize labor. He once fired an engineer by having him run down and driven out of the factory grounds under the hood of a car. He abhorred war, yet made profits by building for the military. He was an internationalist and an anti-Semite. He revolutionized the modern factory yet yearned for a lost rural ideal.

Most of these conflicting impulses were played out in his attempts to carve a modern Midwestern American town out of the Amazonian rainforest. This book tells the fascinating story of the effort to build Fordlândia, designed to be both a ready supply of cheap rubber and an example of the superiority of Ford’s vision of modern life. It failed miserably in both efforts. The book drags in parts, but overall is a well-written and wide-ranging history with a fascinating epilogue outlining the lingering problems in Amazonia.

Lots of information about a project I had never heard about.

In FORDLANDIA, Greg Grandin recounts the story of the Ford Motor Company building a city in Brazil to grow rubber trees to produce latex for the tires for its cars and also provides a lot of background on the company and Henry Ford, its founder. Neither understood the people or the environment of the Amazon when they went into this failed experiment.

I found this book interesting for a lot of reasons. Henry Ford was a contradiction - ahead of his times in many ways, he was also racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic. He thought he could build a utopian American style city in the heart of the jungle. I also found the changes in the manufacturing process fascinating. Companies used to make all of the items they needed to make a product rather than outsourcing them as is done today. The book was repetitive at times but I still enjoyed the well produced audio version.

While the topic was interesting, this book took forever to get through and I found it a bit boring, if I'm honest.