Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.

Grandin, Greg (author).

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In the 1920s, a cartel of Dutch and English rubber barons held a monopoly on the world’s supply of rubber. The sole source of rubber was the South American tree Hevea brasiliensi, whose sap is natural latex. Smugglers had secreted seeds of the plant out of the Brazilian rain forest and created plantations in East Asia, monopolizing the supply of this essential commodity. In an effort to break this cartel, the great industrialist Henry Ford, who needed rubber for tires, purchased a land tract the size of Connecticut in the Amazon, intending to produce the largest rubber plantation on earth. The result was Fordlandia, a massively overreaching project that also sought to create a utopian Midwestern town in the middle of the Brazilian jungle. The project was a massive failure, as the American team was unprepared for the brutal challenges of unpredictable weather and an onslaught of diseases and insects that would ultimately destroy both the crop of rubber trees and the lives of everyone involved. Grandin’s account is an epic tale of a clash between cultures, values, man, and nature.