Introduction: ways of living, ways of knowing -- From scramblers for fruit to banana empire, 1870-1930 -- Tropical vexations -- Corporate welfarism meets the tropics -- Wandering foci of infection -- Becoming banana cowboys -- Serving science on the side -- Conclusion

"Eli Black was the immigrant rabbi-turned-CEO who transformed the notoriously corrupt United Fruit into a model of ethical business. Then he died by suicide. How did it all go wrong? Matt Garcia traces Black's own descent into corruption and despair-the unraveling, and the deliberate forgetting,...