Greg Landin's "Fordlandia:The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" is a familiar cautionary tale of western civilization's hubris, specifically the American can do and know how sub genre. It features phenomena observed in similiar stories, the clash and misunderstanding of cultures, human greed and stupidity, the inherent conflicts of liberal capitalism and its impulses and the futility of imposing things from above.Professor Landin's recounting of Henry Ford's 1928 purchase of a 6200 square mile tract of the Amazon rainforest in northeast Brazil and his attempt to transplant his ideals, prejudices and philosophies of society and business into one self sustaining, profitable, economically and morally uplifting American community/factory town is as interesting as it is ultimately depressing in its inevitable denouement to post modern readers. In order to contextualize his recounting of this enormous undertaking the author coterminously explains to the reader in sufficient detail both the history of world wide rubber production and the even more fascinating, and to my mind maddening, life and ideas of Henry Ford. The often puzzling contradiction of Ford's actions and strongly professed beliefs as played out during this time both in America and Brazil, complicate further the seemingly insurmountable cultural, economic and scientific problems of his plan for Fordlandia. The book makes manifest the folly of Ford's unfortunate tendency to eschew the opinions of experts in favor of his home grown cadre of self taught and field proven managers and engineers.
August 13, 2009 10:08 AM
