Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fordlandia:
1. What first prompted Henry Ford in 1927 to buy the plot of land in Brazil? Did his motives change over the years? If so...into what?
2. Describe Ford's capitalistic ideal. What did he envision for Brazil, and how did he attempt to impose it on the Amazonian jungle?
3. How was that capitalistic ideal slipping away from him at home in the US? What forces had Ford unleashed in this country that undermined his core beliefs in a humane, moral order?
4. Talk about the many forces at work against Ford's vision in Brazil? What happened? Who—or what—was at fault in the project's many failures? Was failure inevitable?
5. Describe Henry Ford. Was he an idealist, an autocrat, an elitist or friend of the working man?
6. How did Ford's attempt 80 years ago, to convert the lush, naturally abundant Brazilian landscape into industrial agriculture, foreshadow today's destruction of the rainforest?
7. In what way might this account be seen as a parable for 21st-century attempts at globalization? Are there lessons to be learned? Or would that be reading too much into what is a single moment in history?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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