Henry Ford was a crazy and stubborn guy. He despised cows because they were so inefficient, and made everyone eat/drink soy products instead. He bought historical places and had them transported, whole, into a historic village in which he hid on bad days.

Also: white people were his obvious favorite.

This crazy thread wound through Ford's life and into the Amazon, where he decided he was going to start a rubber plantation.

He had an odd dislike of "experts," so he didn't actually hire anyone who knew anything about:
a) city planning
b) the Amazon
or
c) rubber planting.

The city -- in the Amazon -- where rubber was supposed to be planted -- failed.

So spectacularly it was kind of hilarious, except for the fact that people (a LOT of people, MANY of whom were children) died.

No one knew what food to import/grow,
how to store things,
how to build appropriately for the region,
what to do about the illnesses or pests,
how to control racial tensions,
how to impose prohibition (!!!),
how to keep people occupied,
how to keep the staff from quitting,
or -- for the love of God --
how to get that damn rubber thing up and running.

Ford, who never actually visited the place once, just kept throwing money at the place because he was too stubborn to give up. It never turned anything remotely close to a profit. He lost something like $28 million on the project, and this is in dollars from that time -- during the Great Depression.

Sadly, this book is a slightly dull read. It's not a particularly gripping rendition of what is, at the end of the day, a really cool story. It's a four- or five-star tale with a two-star writing style.