The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

I found this book interesting in many ways. It was easy to read since it touched many subjects that are familiar to me. The book covers historic facts of the Victorian age and its influence in the world but specially South America and the countries of Bolivia and Brazil whose Amazonian region was and is difficult to explore or study. It is well balanced since the book covers many areas that help understand different points of view of previous times compared to present times. I found answers to questions that come up as you read this book. For instance, to refer to the tribes that populate the Amazonian forests as savages, made me question who is anyone to judge, specially after the atrocities of WWI, described in the book as well as all the inhuman spectacle of WW2. Also, it explains what was happening in the areas related to the fields he got to be involved in like archeology and the discovery of Machu Pichu which may have influenced him. Fawcett’s motivations could have been banal if they were glory or becoming famous but he showed an ethical position not usual in his time which was to approach the indigenous people in a non violent way, trying not to use arms and ordering to drop arms even if danger was felt. He would raise his hands and confront the Indians which gave him good results since he got to be treated as a sort of friend. This respectful behavior, considering the times, was something positive to take in account when trying to define Fawcett's personality which could show his humanity, something to learn from him. Now, consider that Indiana Jones is partly based in the real life of Percy Fawcett and P.F. is one of the characters of one of his movies; however, Indiana Jones had no problem in shooting for entertainment. Having lived in Bolivia and having done some exploration myself I may have a different take to this adventure. To start, one of Fawcett's motivation was as normal as to answer why people climb mountains, the answer is,” because it's there". I have done hiking going from La Paz at 12000 ft. above sea level to about 15000 ft. and then down to the tropics of Yungas which is the start of the Amazonian jungle all along an Inca road which was partly well preserved considering hundreds of years of use. After getting familiar with this subtropical region, it happened that I read The mines of King Salomon and this book, cited in Grann's book as well, inspired me to go farther. My plan was to go to an uncharted area in the forest called Madidi, which is a national park now. My motivation was just to see what no one else has seen. I was able to enlist two university friends who seemed interested but who back down at the last minute. Next year I tried again but I had a sudden back ache problem. Going back to the book, Fawcett's intentions may have been to attain fame by finding not El Dorado but something like Machu Pichu which was “found” in 1911. He visited Cusco and Tiahuanacu and was able to marvel at the achievements of these civilizations. But destiny put him in the Bolivian jungle with the aid of the British government, it wasn't something that he was looking for but that opened his eyes and his innate explorer spirit. Before I even finished reading this book I was compelled to read about the original source, Percy Fawcett's own words, compiled in a book “Lost trail, lost cities” by Brian Fawcett, his son. By reading it, I found out that in his first trip he was hired by the Bolivian government, P. Fawcett does not mention Brazil in the first expedition which was actually work. Now, there are historical details that are not clear. The border problem between Bolivia and Brazil was already established in 1903 after a short war between these two countries and the result was the annexation of the Acre, an area of 190,000 square Kilometers (75,000 sq mls), more than ¾ the size of UK. By the way, something that this book could have in next edition is a better map, the map of Bolivia is not clear. There are details in the Fawcett's book that could have been part of Grann's book or even the movie, like the moment when, after departing La Paz, one of many mules P.F. had, runs away and that was the mule that had the $£1000 in gold he received as part of the payment from the Bolivian government, an interesting historical detail, a “jingling treasure” in the saddle bags. However, Fawcett explains that the mule was brought back by local people who he rewarded. P .F. describes foreigners by name but there is no mention of Bolivian dignitaries with the exception of the president of Bolivia who was taking matters with his own hands and who knew these lands very well. The region next to the Brazilian border bears his name, Pando. “All who have lived in these lands and learned to know them fell captive to their irresistible charm”, Fawcett writes as part of his reflexions. Is this one of the motives he kept coming back?

There was a time men explored the planet earth, driven by the need to know. Fame was secondary, their internal urges drove them on. Most prominent were the pole explorers during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. But there were other places to explore, some the exact opposite, hot, teeming places overriden with life, bursting with new flora and fauna. Africa and South America attracted these men as it had attracted others four hundred years earlier, but for different reasons. Lack of education and scientific knowledge did not stop them then, nor did the same stop these later explorers. One of the most famous of them was Percy H. Fawcett, a legend in his own time, a forgotten man now. David Grann has resurrected this man from obscurity. I had never heard of him, never knew of the countless searches for him, until I read this book, "The Lost City Of Z". I was fascinated by his story. Grann told a lot of his life, using his biography almost like a novel but interspersing his account with factual data yet without disrupting the drama. I met, through the book's pages, many interesting characters who also led interesting lives, intersecting their own efforts with that of this daring explorer. Some of his cohorts were unable to keep up with Fawcett, he, in turn, was unable to gauge them correctly and got rid of them as soon as possible without killing them, in fact, in some instances, very few to be truthful, he failed in his mission because he knew if he did not fail these men he did not like would die in the wilderness. So he put their lives above his drive but he did not change hisopinion of them and refused to have anything good to say about them later and wanted nothing to do with them. Money was a constant worry for Fawcett except that he did not let this stop him, he bargained with the Royal Geographic Society constantly for funding for expeditions he wanted to do. He had help from many members of the Society but he also was shocked at times to see others gather what he did not. Consequently he would go on expeditions underfunded but still perfornm enormous work for the society and gain knowledge of the planet for others to use. He also had competition for his life's dream, the discovery of El Dorado which he called Z. Hence the title of the book. Fawcett never returned from an expedtion he was on in 1925. He took his eldest son with him and a friend of his son, both young men he planned on depending upon. Raleigh Rimell was this friend's name and it developed that he was ot equal to the efforts expected if him by either the father or son. He lacked their natural immunity, or whatever it was that made them seem immune to insect attack or biological, but father and son did not care, they seemed to think he was supposed to be their equal and treated him as such until he failed them. Where Grann got this information from he never says, he often throws such tidbits of knowledge into his account of Fawcett without explanation. Grann takes it upon himself to track down the final exploration and finds everybody seemingly bending over backwards to aid him, to give him knowledge no one else was able to gain, and he uses this experience to allow him to say things with authority and lend credence to his conclusions. Grann goes by himself to South America, gets a truck driver to take him over Fawcett's newly mapped route and get several tales of fawcett's last appearance, even getting some of the Brazilian natives to tell him how they lied to some of the authorities about what they knew of these last days. The book is actually two stories in one, a biography of Fawcett and also Grann's attempt to find out what happened to him. The contrast between the two lifetimes is startling, such a change in such a comparatively short time. Grann makes sure the reader learns it, he tells him what it was like to live earlier, then brings him up-to-date on presnt conditions. A lot is left out, but present expeditions are much better equipped, more knowledgable (and more expensive) but do avoid most of what made the earlier expeditions so dangerous. The natives are tamed, the forest destroyed where Grann ventured, but he does not mention the insects. Did he have insecticides with him or was destroying the forest enough to lower the danger? Many questions left unanswered. But it still took time. Percy Fawcett's descendants were scattered, Graann had to look them up. It all added up to the time it took him to write the book. No absolute answers are given, it is up to the reader to decide for himself what these answers are. tags: Percy Fawcett, amazon, brazil, exploring expeditions, El Dorado

Forty years ago, when I was young and crazy, I made three trips down the Amazon River or it's tributaries. That's what made me want to read this true-life story of one of the most enduring mysteries of jungle exploration. I can vouch for the book's descriptions of endless jungle, every kind of insect and disease one can imagine, poison snakes everywhere, piranhas (although this book failed to point out those flesh eating fish are usually only found in quiet pools, not where the current is strong) and the fact that traveling on the ground is next to impossible. It would have been much more dangerous when explorer Lt. Colonel Percy Fawcett was doing it. Starvation was one of the reasons that so many explorers died in the jungle, because as described so accurately in this account, it is next to impossible to even see any game that could be eaten, much less managing to kill and eat it. Living off the land is next to impossible for non-Indians. Some insect bites wouldn't cause much of a problem at the time they occurred, but would kill the victim years later. The Amazon jungle really is a "Green Hell." Fawcett's friend Conan Dole used some of Fawcett's tales in his classic "The Lost World." Fawcett considered himself invincible. He enjoyed a remarkable constitution that made him appear to be resistant of most diseases and insect bites. Unarmed, he often walked slowly toward savage, hostile Indians with his arms raised and gifts for them held high as poison darts and six and seven-foot arrows whizzed by his head and even passed between his legs. He was absolutely fearless and that trait was often demonstrated when he fought in the trenches of World War I. He received the British "Distinguished Service Order" medal and a rank of Lt. Colonel for that valorous service. It may be that Fawcett began to believe in his own invincibility that pushed him too far and cost him his life along with that of his eldest son Jack and Jack's friend who was also part of Fawcett's final three-man exploration? Fawcett was one of the last "folk heroes" who explored those pesky blank spots on the world's maps. He made several mapping expeditions into the jungle prior to World War I. He was certain that a mighty civilization had once existed in the vast stretches of the Amazon River Basin. He believed the reports of the earliest explorers and found various pieces of evidence on his own such as wonderful pottery. The media reports of his various exploits captured the imagination of the civilized world. In one description of the maggots that quickly infested infections and were literally impossible to remove, he reported how some Indians treated the problems. "The Echojas would make a curious whistling noise with their tongues, and at once the grub's head would issue from the blowhole. Then the Indians would give the sore a quick squeeze and the invader was ejected. I sucked, whistled, protested, and even played the flute to mine, with absolutely no effect." Another sample of jungle trivia regarded snakebites. It the puncher wound bleeds, the snake wasn't poisonous. If the fang wounds didn't bleed, and produced a bluish patch, the snake was poisonous. Useful advice for anyone playing "Hide and Seek" with members of the serpent world. He also reported spying an anaconda that he insisted was at least sixty feet in length and even after he had shot it, it revived and "jolted toward Fawcett and his party--sending them fleeing in fear." In 1911 Hiram Bingham discovered the Fabled Inca City of Machu Picchu. Like Fawcett's legendary city of Z or El Dorado, Machu Picchu had long been regarded as myth. Bingham's discovery probably provided hope that he too would succeed in his search for Z, whose existence most experts had discounted as an impossibility because it couldn't possibly have been produced by small groups of savages. This book's author went off to retrace Fawcett's last journey in hopes of finally solving this lasting mystery. He was better equipped than Fawcett and had some new leads to follow. He definitely didn't have a death wish and didn't want to become one of the 100 or so rescuers who over the years had also disappeared into the jungle while searching for Fawcett. Since the last true-life adventure story I read and reviewed was about the ill-fated Donner Wagon Train getting snowed in for the winter in the mountain passes on their way to California, I didn't really expect to enjoy this tome as much as that nail-biting tale. Wrong, they are different, but what happens in this last chapter of this book will send you rushing to Amazon (the book seller, not the place) in search of a couple of books by Florida archaeologist Michael Heckenberger and Anna Roosevelt. She is Teddy's great-granddaughter, "who is an archaeologist at the University of Illinois, and has excavated a cave near Santarem, in the Brazilian Amazon, that was filled with rock paintings--renditions of animal and human figures similar to those that Fawcett had described seeing in various parts of the Amazon and that bolstered his theory of Z. Buried in the cave were remains of a settlement at least ten thousand years old..." WOW, I hope Fawcett and his eldest son Jack are still watching the unfolding current events here on Planet Earth and smiling and giving each other high-fives. Great Adventure, well told.

The Book: The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon David Grann's book, published in 2009, is a masterclass in narrative non-fiction. It's a compelling blend of biography, historical detective story, and travelogue. * The Story: The book tells the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who, in the early 20th century, became obsessed with finding a mythical, advanced civilization he called "Z" deep in the Amazon jungle. The book chronicles Fawcett's numerous perilous expeditions and his unwavering conviction that this city existed, despite widespread skepticism from the scientific community. It culminates in his final, ill-fated journey in 1925, from which he and his son, Jack, never returned. * A Dual Narrative: What makes the book so engaging is Grann's decision to interweave Fawcett's story with his own modern-day journey into the Amazon to retrace Fawcett's footsteps. This parallel narrative adds a layer of immediacy and suspense, as Grann faces similar dangers and challenges, bringing the historical account to life for the reader. * Themes: Grann explores themes of obsession, the clash between European imperialist views and the reality of indigenous cultures, and the nature of exploration itself. He also challenges the long-held notion of the Amazon as a "counterfeit paradise," a jungle incapable of supporting large, sophisticated societies. * Critical Reception: The book was a critical success, praised for its meticulous research, evocative prose, and gripping suspense. It reads with the pace of a thriller while remaining a deeply informative work of history.

I'll keep this short and sweet, since most other reviews have covered everything. This book was a great read, steeped in mystery and intrigue. I had never heard of Percy Harrison Fawcett before I started reading this book, and now I'll never forget his story. Overall, the book was well written. The style accentuates the material, and what could become boring tales of endless hacking through the jungle, doesn't. Luckily for us, PHF was trained in the art of notation, and luckily again, the author's research was well traveled. All the detail you could want is here, and even in a jungle that is thick and barely passable, you can see everything clearly. I gave this book four stars instead of five for two reasons. The first is that the ending seemed a little too abrupt for me. It could be because I was reading it on the Kindle, and the book literally ends with around 70-75% left on the progress bar. The rest is references and pictures at the end. I also had read some reviews here that proclaim a "surprise" ending, one that I personally did not happen upon. It seemed the final conclusion was merely another man's guess, however intriguing. My second grievance with this book is that I did not care for the boring dialog about PHF's early life. This took up the first few chapters, and was immensely boring to me. But overall, great book. Doesn't take long to read, and if you like adventure/mystery books, definitely pick it up.

The Lost City of Z evokes a literary journalism style similar to Susan Orlean in The Orchid Thief. In The Orchid Thief, the story did not end up being one about Susan, or about the orchids, but of a man and his obsession. Through his passion, efforts, eccentricity and tenacity, the orchid thief character transcended his own limitations to become a human metaphor of the curious legend. With similar research and style, Grann has created the legend of the city of Z in explorer Percy Fawcett. I would not consider this a memoir or personal narrative. The Grann sections are small and fall backstage, only coming forward at the very end to provide closure in a story that evaporates before Fawcett could pen its conclusion. The chapters bounce between historical, research-based narrative journalism and accounts of Grann's preparation and departure on his modern-day "mini-expedition." However, the modern-day chapters are very small apostrophes through the story. The main narrative is largely quotes and facts from diaries, books, letters and other sources Grann unearthed in his research. These snippets of immortal written conversation serve to breathe life into the story. They make the historical characters human: funny, sarcastic, hopeful, disappointed, hurt, spiteful, erring, surprising. By allowing them to speak for themselves, Fawcett becomes more than what the limits of a legend would allow. He becomes someone you could imagine as your bizarre uncle--someone you'd love to have a few drinks with, but probably wouldn't want to live with. When Grann does interject with descriptions and insight into the character's thoughts and motivations, it is done in a meticulous and non-exploitive manner. Through his research and direct citations he painted complex portraits of Fawcett and others, allowing the good and the bad to arise. He doesn't paint Fawcett as a monster, for example, after he sends disease-riddled Murray back out of the jungle. He doesn't insist or try to convince us it was the right thing, either. He quotes Fawcett's writings and adds a few descriptions of the jungle and the dangers the expedition faced to give us context, and allows us to interpret the events with the evidence presented. The only unfortunate part about the book is the beginning. It is extremely slow for the first 50 pages or so, to the point where I was almost falling asleep holding it up. Grann was describing intricate Victorian social mores and historical characters before we had a reason to care about them or what ever was to become of them. It wasn't until we had been through The Green Hell with Fawcett that we began to be invested in his life and give much credibility to the theory of Z. I understand that the author was trying to provide us context and background, but I wanted to take a big red pen and circle those pages with BORING! and DRAGS! underlined. In the end, Grann didn't stumble into the jungle and fall into a fortress of gold. Neither did he give up and dismiss Fawcett as a crack-theorist. His discovery was a beautiful compromise: newly discovered ruins almost devoured by the jungle, leaving only light imprints tracing the ingenuity and brilliance of their former inhabitants. Z doesn't stand as a gaudy monstrosity to be pillaged. It is mathematics, society, and survival. In the same way, Fawcett wasn't an immortal hero. He was a man who lived an incredible life that, while amazing, was not immune to reality. It is the story and the spirit that can sustain and teach us, not the bones or the ruins.

I like true adventure books. David Grann's The Lost City of Z,...339 pages is a page burner. I read it in 3 days. The reader wants to read on. Lots of notes in the back for the reader to get more information. Lots of interesting B/W pictures including a weird one of possible natives in the Amazon with their mouths and faces in their chests with no heads. Some of Europe's "scientists" in the late 18 and early 19 century believed there was the possibility that some of the primitive natives might look like this. Also dinosaurs might still live in the totally unknown and unexplored vast Amazon Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World"). We see part of Percy Fawcett's stellar military WW1 carrier. He retires as a Lt. Col. and gets a small pension. We see the poor Englishman explorer Percy Fawcett using his small military pension, getting funds from rich Americans and eventually the Royal Geographic Society to launch a small expedition with his son Jack and his friend Raleigh. They go into the Amazon and are lost and never heard from again. Here was the best, most experienced Amazon explorer of his time with some previous explorations. The world, especially his wife can't believe he is missing or killed. We see his travels through swamps, heat, rain, poisonous animals, piranha fish, and lots of different diseases especially Malaria. The book goes back and forth chapter by chapter with Percy Fawcett and his experiences and other explorers and the author researching about Fawcett, interviewing people,getting maps and data and finally launching his own small expedition to find out about Percy Fawcett and the city of Z. There was a legend many people believed the city of Z held much gold and riches and there was a Chief that daily had a sticky paste applied to his body and gold dust blown all over him. Then daily he had a bath and washed it off and let it fall away. A rich millionaire explorer Dr.Rice launches a large expedition with the latest devices like radio but also does not find Z. Fawcett's wife for her entire life tries to find what happened to her husband and son. She even becomes a spiritualist and uses mediums/psychics to try to locate them. She lives a poor, long life and dies penniless. Later the author with the help of explorer Heckenberger finds the vast remains of....I won't ruin the ending. For me this was a fascinating book as I knew nothing about Percy Fawcett and his obsession to find the lost city of Z and the hundred or so later explorers who were killed or lost also trying to find Z or Fawcett. A great book for anyone interested in exploration and seeing what a man( Fawcett) with little money but a great deal of heart and believing in himself ,tried to accomplish the almost impossible against savages, heat, rain, poisonous and dangerous creatures, running out of food and fighting many diseases...INMO a living hell. Some place I would never go.Percy Fawcett's stubbornness/ego and obsession to discover the city of Z probably directly contributed to his death and the death of his son and his son's friend Raleigh and leaving his wife a pauper. A great book...4 3/4 stars as the ending was a little abrupt.

The saga of Col. Percy Fawcett's disappearance into the Amazon jungle in 1925 is mentioned in many of the books I've read on alternate versions of history. In one book, Col Fawcett finds an entrance to the "inner earth" where a race of superbeing live, and he is unable to get back home. In others, Fawcett finds the fabulous jungle city and joins its inhabitants, deciding this advanced civilization should remain unknown to the rest of the world. I had developed a curiosity about Col. Fawcett, along with wondering if there really could be remnants of an advanced civilization in the huge area of Amazon rain forest. I picked up this book to find out if author David Grann had discovered Col Fawcett's fate. I was unaware of how many Fawcett fanatics were out there, people who have actually gone in search of him or some indication of what happened to him, perhaps hoping that they too might enter the fabulous jungle city. The author of The Lost City of Z became one of those fanatics, finding himself totally caught up in the adventure of trying to find out what happened to Fawcett. This book is a combination of the story of Fawcett and his family (especially long-suffering wife Nina, and son Jack, who, along with his friend Raleigh Rimell, went with Fawcett on that final ill-fated trip) and the author's own trip to the Brazilian interior following in Fawcett's footsteps. It turns out that quite a lot is known about Fawcett's last journey in search of the lost city he called "Z." The Royal Geographical Society (RGS), based in London, had sponsored Fawcett's trips and this venerable society still exists, along with records of Fawcett's journeys on their behalf. The RGS mission was to map the unknown parts of the world, and, to that end, they trained and sent "explorers" into unmapped areas. This was an era before the academic disciplines of Anthropology and Archeology had made much headway. Many explorers were wealthy men who used their fortunes to go on adventures that also added to knowledge of the earth: its land masses, plant life, animals, and primitive peoples. Fawcett, alas for him, was not wealthy due to the fact that his parents had squandered the family fortune. He needed funding from the RGS to continue pursuing his theories about the Amazon jungle. Fawcett, inspired by the stories of earlier Amazon explorers who reported seeing cities and large populations, believed that there was a fabulous stone city somewhere in the jungle that was part of a civilization that had once thrived, but was now mostly gone. Unlike some explorers who treated the natives as enemies, Fawcett felt that the idigenous tribes could be of great help and tried to befriend them in order to get information. He felt he could make better contact with them if he traveled light, without a large retinue of guides and pack animals. On his final fateful journey, he took only his son, and his son's friend Raleigh. None of them returned from this expedition. So did the author find the answer to Fawcett's disappearance? Well, sort of. With far better equipment than Fawcett had, the author did find and speak to natives who had stories, objects, or memories of Fawcett. The preponderance of evidence showed that Fawcett had traveled, against the advice of the nearest tribe, into an area inhabited by a hostile tribe and he and his companions were most likely killed. But no one could actually confirm this. This book takes you into the world of Percy Fawcett and his obsession with the lost city, but it is not until the last chapter that we learn that the Colonel's vision of a great civilization in the jungle may not be far from the truth. This brings me to my biggest complaint about the book. Why did the author take such a long route to the punch line (yes, there was an advanced civilization), then tell us so little about what is now known about cities and civilizations in the jungle? He does give us the main objections of "experts" on why a large, thriving civilization could not exist. First, people said the natives were not intelligent enough to have created a civilization. When times changed and there was acknowledgement that it was not just Englishmen who could be civilized, objection number two appeared: the environment was too harsh to support a large population in any comfort. In fact, early explorers had an incredibly difficult time finding food and dealing with the bugs, the incessant rain and swamp, and the raging rivers, However, Fawcett had discovered that the tribes he contacted had plenty of food and seemed to manage just fine. Actually, if you do some research, you'll learn that within the Amazon jungle is an area of man-made fertile land called the "terra preta." It was created by an unknown process in the past and has remained very fertile to this day, suitable for growing large crops. And there is evidence that the population was once very much larger than today and a system of roads joined numerous villages. There is so much more to this story left to be told. I recommend another two books. Explorers of the Amazon by Anthony Smith tells about the earliest Western visitors to the Amazon, including the stories about early explorers seeing cities and roads. I also enjoyed The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage , the story of John Franklin and his obsession with finding a northwest passage through the Arctic Ocean in the 1800s. In the cases of Fawcett and Franklin, the wife of each devoted the rest of her life to finding the truth of what happened to her husband. Being the wife, son or daughter of an obsessed adventurer was a tough and lonely life. The explorers themselves dealt with a constant danger of death. Reading about these explorations makes me intensely grateful that I don't have to deal with the terrible hardships these men suffered in trying to prove their theories and bring back knowledge of places unknown. For Percy Fawcett - and many others - the final journey into the unknown was a one-way trip.

Me ha gustado mucho. Los primeros capitulos un poco densos. El resto del libro muy fluido. El capitulo final sorprendente.

With such an intrinsically interesting subject to start with --the disappearance of jungle explorers obsessed about a lost "City of Gold" generations ago-- this book should have been much more interesting than it actually was. One feels that a straight historical investigation would have done the trick, but instead the author has cluttered it up and slowed it down by giving equal time to his own personal re-creation of the trip. Why do we need this? Do we really care where he bought his camping gear or what his wife said to him on his cell phone? What we want to know about is the Real Deal: what happened to the original people. This question is not answered, nor is there even a speculative theory backed by specious argument which would have made the book somehow worth our trip thru it. Why do so many authors assume we want to know about THEM, instead of what they profess to be writing about? False advertising, I say.

Un eccellente racconto di uomini avventurosi che sfidano il pericolo per la conoscenza.

Percy Harrison Fawcett was a man with a dream. His dream was that of many generations of men before him and one that would ensnare plenty of those who would come after. It was also a dream that would see him disappear without a trace along with his son Jack and Jack’s best friend Raleigh. You see Percy Harrison Fawcett was an explorer. Not just any explorer but an explorer of the Amazon jungle in a time when large swathes of that part of South America were still marked in black with the word ‘unexplored’ on the maps of the world. For men of his era (the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) it was still a badge of honour and, more importantly, a route to riches to be the one who made a major scientific breakthrough in our understanding of the dark swathes still evident on any world map.They all yearned to be the next Livingstone or Stanley and would stop at nothing to prove their mettle against seemingly insurmountable odds to a world holding its collective breath. All too often this led to tragedy when, after sailing up the mouth of the Amazon river, they were never seen or heard of again. Percy Harrison Fawcett was a cut above virtually all of these men. An artillery officer who discovered his thirst for discovery whilst stationed in what was then Ceylon, he came back to England to train as an explorer with the Royal Geographical society. This was the premier scientific institute of the day, along with the Royal Society, and one which funded many expeditions all round the world. Fawcett was a man whose outstanding physical fitness, mental drive and wrought iron constitution made him perfect for the jungle. He could endure the privations that came with his line of work far better than other men. When those around him were either dead or dying, Fawcett just carried on. This was also the reason that few men wanted to stay by his side. No one could keep up with him and this was a problem when trying to recruit for his expeditions. His reputation as a first rate explorer went hand in glove with that of a man with absolutely no time for anybody who did not measure up to his exacting standards (on one occasion, whilst writing the obituary of a man who had just drowned in the Amazon, he described him as a “A hopeless waster! A typical rotter!”). The flip side to this was the care he showed when interacting with the indigenous population. Over the course of his expeditions, Fawcett befriended many tribes and it was this that led him to develop the theory of a lost super-civilisation, which he called ‘Z’. ‘Z’ was Fawcett’s mythical early civilisation that he was convinced lay in ruins somewhere deep in the Amazon and was just waiting to be discovered. The problem for Fawcett was that hardly anyone one else shared this belief and his dabbling in spiritualism only confirmed many peoples opinion of him as an eccentric who was past his prime. That combined with a lack of funds within the exploration community after world War 1, and the realisation that the field was now best served by scientists whose could bring their specialist knowledge to bear, rather than the gentleman explorer, meant that men like Fawcett were forced out of the exploration business. Ultimately he was forced to rely on his son and his sons best friend along with funding from various different US media organisations for his final, fateful journey. This is the tale that David Gramm sets out to tell. He uses Fawcett’s story to open up a world of indigenous tribes, deadly creatures and virulent diseases which is still as alien to us today as it was a century before. On the way he tells of the rivalry between many of the explorers pitting themselves against each other, the desperate search for expeditionary funds and the emotional wreckage left in their wake. It reads like a boys own adventure and it is to his credit that, in a world where we are just a click away from any place on earth, he keeps the suspense going to nearly 300 pages. His decision to follow in the footsteps of Fawcett allows the book to open up another layer to this story which is the myth that arose in the wake of Fawcett’s disappearance and the subsequent rescue attempts that were laid on in the immediate aftermath. Pretty much all of these were either deeply misguided or thinly veiled efforts at self promotion but the results were generally the same. Either the ‘rescuer’ came out of the jungle with fantastic tales of how Fawcett had gone native, only to be ultimately discredited by Fawcett’s long suffering wife, Nina, or they didn’t come out at all and in their disappearance, became part of the myth they had set out to unravel. Before reading this, I had never heard of Percy Harrison Fawcett or the world in which he lived but this book provides a fascinating glimpse in to a time where men were measured by the risks they were willing to take in a vain glorious effort to find fame by shining a light in to the unknown. Whilst not wishing to give the ending away, I have to say that I found it deeply satisfying and I would happily recommend this to anyone who is looking for a book to take away on holiday or is just looking for a cracking read.

Dieses Buch beschäftigt sich mit Percy Harrison Fawcett und der von ihm gesuchten Stadt "Z". Es springt zwischen der persönlichen Forschungsreise des Autors und der Rekonstruierung der Lebensgeschichte PHFs hin un her. Somit ist das Genre des Buchs klar NON-FICTION, auch wenn es sich wie ein Roman lesen lässt und man trotz der vielen wissenschaftlichen Teile nicht von diesen erschlagen wird. Das Buch ist unfassbar spannend geschrieben und trifft genau den richtigen Mix aus Historie und Romanerzählung. Ich kann es jedem nur ans Herz legen, der sich einen der letzen Entdecker unserer Zeit kennenlernen will.