Fordlandia: Henry Ford's Misguided Amazon Utopia

Greg Grandin's new book "Fordlandia" explores the little-known history of Henry Ford's efforts to create his own utopia in the Amazon rain forest - an American-style town for rubber plantation workers. The jungle has now reclaimed the ruins of this town, which remind Grandin of Detroit. He writes:

"To truly grasp how far America has fallen from the heights of its industrial grandeur -- and to understand how that grandeur led to stupendous acts of folly -- you should tour another set of ruins far from the Midwest rustbelt; they lie, in fact, deep (and nearly forgotten) in, of all places, the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. There, overrun by tropical vines, sits Henry Ford's testament to the belief that the American Way of Life could easily be exported, even to one of the wildest places on the planet. The eeriest thing of all is this: Today, the ruins of Fordlandia look a lot like those in Highland Park, as well as in other rustbelt towns where neighborhoods that once hummed with life centered on a factory are now returned to weed."