by Greg Grandin
Very interesting. I had no idea such settlements had been a popular thing. Definitely something that should be on the must read list for anyone interested in those times.
Ford was the god of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which I just finished, so this seemed like a good way to learn more about the context of Huxley's book. And it was, but it's about 100 pages too long. Much of the information is repeated; the story of the genesis of the town of Alberta, for instan...
I gave it three stars because I liked it, but I did not love it. On the positive, it is a very interesting book on a very interesting topic. On the negative, there is a lot of small detail that can slow down the narrative a bit. At moments, I did skim through the book. The story itself is fascinatin...
The book is as much about Ford the man, an individual of extraordinary and frequently disturbing contributions, as it is about his bizarre quest to create a Utopian rubber-producing empire in the Amazon jungle. Quite a fascinating story.
This sounds like an urban legend gone bad (do any go good?), so I had to read about Henry Ford's attempt to build "the American Dream" in the jungles of Brazil. The financial impetus was to grow rubber for tires and other auto parts, but by the time he started rubber prices were low and the need was...
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