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.