Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (Hardcover)

by Gerard Colby (Author), Charlotte Dennett (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
This extraordinary saga moves from the Oval Office to the Amazon rain forests to show how Cold War intrigue linked a powerful American family, the U.S. government, and a missionary organization in a forty-year campaign to conquer the Amazon. At the heart of this story are two intensely ambitious men: Nelson Rockefeller, scion of the liberal and immensely wealthy Standard Oil family, and William Cameron Townsend, founder of the ultraconservative Wycliffe Bible Translators. Although leaders of opposing camps, they found common cause in the struggle against fascism and then communism, with the result that hundreds of thousands of Amazonian tribespeople died or were displaced. The systematic campaign of colonization fathered by Rockefeller and Townsend was a chilling foreshadowing of American intervention in the Third World to secure valuable natural resources in the name of democracy.

From Publishers Weekly
Nelson Rockefeller, who died in 1979, owned vast Latin American real estate and cattle ranching, mining, industrial and financial interests centered in Brazil. To protect his empire and secure Third World assets for exploitation by U.S. capitalism, Rockefeller-a top Latin American adviser to presidents from FDR to Nixon, and Ford's vice-president-played a dominant role in shaping the U.S.'s interventionist policy in Latin America, according to this blistering expose based on 18 years of research. Rockefeller, as President Eisenhower's special assistant for Cold War strategy, oversaw the CIA's covert operations abroad and was privy to assassination plots and mind-control experiments, the authors maintain. Colby (DuPont: Behind the Nylon Curtain) and his wife, Dennett, a freelance journalist, charge that Rockefeller, his banks and their allies, working with the CIA, bolstered repressive regimes in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay. Forcible dislocation of native peoples, hunger, disease, genocide and the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest are the legacy of these policies, in the authors' analysis. Another key player in this massive narrative is ultraconservative William Cameron Townsend (1896-1982), founder of the Protestant missionary organization Wycliffe Bible Translators, which worked in concert with Rockefeller and which the authors accuse of destroying indigenous peoples' cultural values to abet penetration by U.S. businesses. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 960 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060167645
• ISBN-13: 978-0060167646
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.8 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #298,592 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #19 in	Books > Outdoors & Nature > Ecology > Rain Forests
  #73 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Forestry

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic reference on who runs our world & how they do it, December 10, 1998

By A Customer

I agree with all the reviews above, especially the last writerwho said to buy it and keep it.

I would only add that the authorsof Thy Will Be Done did an outstanding job of illuminating the intense conflicts between the Kennedys and Rockefellers on almost every business and government issue. Each well-sourced fact paints a picture of how much Big Business, Big Oil and Big Banks hated the Kennedys.

Col. Fletcher Prouty (Man X in the JFK movie) and the makers of the movie Executive Action pointed to a cabal of Big Money as the group that set the JFK assassination machinery in motion. I have always thought this a plausible theory but it needed more facts to support it. Colby's book provides them, in bits and pieces, scattered througout its chapters without ever announcing any belief in a conspiracy to kill JFK.

Yet, when I finished the book, I had a much clearer picture of these Big Money fat cats sitting around, discussing matters of mutual interest, including the fate of the Kennedys. And, there, at the head of the table, sat the Rockefeller Brothers.

Anyone interested in finding out more should consider reading a book by Donald Gibson called Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a book to buy... not check out from library, July 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (Paperback)

The book title does not make full justice to its contents. It only touches on one among the many areas that are covered. The main story line follows the Rockefeller family (specially Nelson's) financial interests in the third world in parallel with the evangelizasion efforts in the same areas. However, it is difficult to imagine a wider coverage of those issues. Full account of the ties between the financial and religious interest is presented. Those range from fundraisers, political campaigns and economic interests at home to political, logistical and conspiratory collaboration abroad. Each facet is well documented so that the reader which can't possibly be well versed in all the different world areas understands the background. It took 18 years for the authors to complete the research. It may take me that long to fully appreciate all the different areas where both Rockefeller and the Evangelism movement had an impact. It is not enough to check out the book from the library... it has to be on the bookshelf of any person intereted in understanding the new type of collonialism.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insights on Elliotts and Saints, March 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (Paperback)

The Colby book is of particular interest to evangelical Christians who have loved and taken inspiration from the lives of Jim and Elizabeth Elliott and Rachel Saint. It adds some information not generally known about their working relationships with each other and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a venerable and respected organization in evangelical circles, that makes them more human and accessible. (Unfortunately, some of the references to the Elliotts and the Saints are not very well documented, so the information should be treated cautiously.) Elizabeth Elliott has admitted in later editions of her book "The Savage My Kinsman," that there are things she prefers not to talk about now, particularly regarding her relationship with Rachel Saint, that Colby sheds some light on. Finally, the context with which the missionaries were working, that is, U.S. politics and commercial interests in South America, will be of interest to churches that need to see the big picture of their missionary work, including the cultural impact of sending whites into an indigenous area. What the book does not seem to do is actually make clear Rockefeller's involvement with the missionaries and SIL, something perhaps better extrapolated from another biography called "Rich Man in the Kingdom," about his father's interest in religious philanthropy.