Though something of a shotgun approach to a broad-ranging topic, Fordlandia is endlessly interesting in its scope. Four of five stars, I liked it a lot.
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a review of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City
While the idea of Henry Ford trying to build a rubber plantation in the uncharted Amazon jungle, complete with all the trimmings of a Midwest American town, conjures up thoughts of “Heart of Darkness”…
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Have you ever seen Fitzcarraldo?
No, but now I've read the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo
Interesting. Not quite the same themes, but some noteworthy parallels.
Just interesting that the Quixotean impulse to bring these hopelessly big modern things into the heart of the Amazon was floating around during this period. And also, both driven in many ways by the rise of the rubber industry thanks to good old Mr. Ford.
I suspect the story in Fitzcarraldo is actually set about 60-80 years earlier than Fordlandia. The Brazilian rubber industry had a huge boom in the late 19th and early 20th century, bringing in tremendous feudal-style wealth (much of which was expended on building opera houses and other trappings of European society). But the "theft" of rubber plants to the Far East where they thrived in plantations (because of lack of pests) caused a glut that made the market and economy tank.
Ford's efforts in Brazil never really did much to get the industry going again there (largely because plantation rubber production is impractical there). It did set a number of precedents for deforestation and exploitation of the Amazon. Ironically, a lot of that is due to soy farming (Ford was a huge support of soy as a substitute for pretty much anything coming off the farm, esp. animal products).