{"id":1122,"date":"2011-05-30T20:57:25","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T04:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2011-05-30T20:57:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T04:57:25","slug":"review-fordlandia-the-rise-and-fall-of-henry-fords-forgotten-jungle-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1122","title":{"rendered":"Review: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently Henry Ford has a Forgotten Jungle City.\u00a0 This is the sort of fact that is impossible for me to ignore.\u00a0 Fortunately it is also impossible for Greg Grandin to ignore and he has done plenty of excellent reserach to bring the whole story to readers of Fordlandia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You have to give Grandin some credit for turning an odd obsession late in Ford’s life into a Forgotten Jungle City.\u00a0 One could easily have looked at the situation and seen a footnote in Ford’s biography and moved on.\u00a0 Grandin sees a grander tale, both in terms of the city’s story and how it reflects the attitudes of Ford and other US industrialists.<\/p>\n

The history section of your local library or bookstore is full of stories of grand engineering feats<\/a>, especially from this time. Most of those narratives have moments where the builders are fumbling around trying to figure out how to make their plan work, or finding the right people to implement it.\u00a0 Several pieces fall together to make any of those projects succeed.\u00a0 While reading Grandin’s story one keeps expecting that chapter where the right people and the right ideas cohere.\u00a0 It doesn’t come.\u00a0 Fordlandia never was a going concern.<\/p>\n

Obviously there are a lot of failed projects, but Fordlandia sets itself apart because it was bold in both hubristic scope and conflicting ideals.\u00a0 Those aspects reflect the personality and philosophy of Henry Ford, and Grandin spends much of the book exploring how it reflects Ford’s career and mindset.\u00a0 That reflection shows a man of surprising contradictions and enormous influence over American thought and industry.\u00a0 There are plenty of reasons to belive Grandin is accurate, and I was left with an interest in finding out more about Ford.<\/p>\n

Overall Fordlandia<\/em> is clear, well-written, and well supported.\u00a0 There are a couple places where it feels slightly padded.\u00a0 Grandin covers some very similar ground more than once, but it is not terribly distracting.\u00a0 Overall it is an interesting story of a corner of history that reflects and magnifies its time.<\/p>\n

Strongly Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently Henry Ford has a Forgotten Jungle City.\u00a0 This is the sort of fact that is impossible for me to ignore.\u00a0 Fortunately it is also impossible for Greg Grandin to ignore and he has done plenty of excellent reserach to bring the whole story to readers of Fordlandia. You have to give Grandin some credit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}