Fordlandia; The Road Out of Hell

Two very different nonfiction titles, but both were very good in their own ways. First up, "Fordlandia" by Greg Grandin. Interesting how ahead of his time Henry Ford was in a lot of ways, such as paying above average wages (this was before unions) and providing free health care to his employees and their families. With the price of rubber so high, he embarked on a grand adventure to build a sort of automotive manufacturing utopia in the Amazon named Fordlandia to grow rubber trees to produce latex. While an excellent idea in theory, it wasn't put into practice very well and he ended up hiring people who had no idea how to go about setting up a plant in the Amazon, let alone anything about growing rubber trees.
"The Road Out of Hell" by Anthony Flacco was a disturbing true crime book about a true sicko--Stewart Northcott, who held his nephew, Sanford Clark, hostage on his chicken ranch in Wineville, California (now Mira Loma) in the late 1920s. He abused the boy, put him through some real horrors, and made him help clean up after his murders. Uncle Stewart liked to kidnap young boys and kill them, including young Walter Collins (the recent Angelina Jolie movie "The Changeling" was about Walter's kidnapping). Poor Sanford felt so responsible for his part in his uncle's awful crimes, even though he was truly a victim as well, that even though he spent the rest of his life doing good in the world, he never was able to forgive himself. It broke my heart when his son described how, on his deathbed, he told his dad he loved him and his dad's last words to him were "Why?". Oh! Poor man. There's a special place in Hell for people like Northcott.