I’d been shivering on Himalayan mountaintops, ice-scoured polar landscapes, and frigid oceans long enough. With cold weather setting in to the Pacific Northwest, I found myself craving a tale set in the greenest, steamiest locale possible. I found just what I was looking for in The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (Vintage Departures). Author David Grann, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, provides a rich concoction of research, original reporting, and suspenseful writing. In the tradition of the best nonfiction writers, Grann delivers a riveting account of British explorer Percy Fawcett’s decades-long obsession with a mythical Amazonian city. A contemporary of Ernest Shackleton, Fawcett was an leader of several South American expeditions and a decorated veteran of World War I. Eccentric, impatient, and blessed with almost superhuman endurance, he had a knack for remaining hale and hearty while his fellow adventurers writhed in agony from yellow fever, malaria, and gruesome insect-induced maladies. Fawcett’s disappearance in the Amazon during the 1920s with his son Jack spawned a cultish following of admirers and trackers, as well as tantalizing rumors that the explorers were still alive. As Grann follows a paper trail of clues about Fawcett and the lost city of Z, he realizes that he too has become obsessed—and heads to the Brazilian jungle to do his own sleuthing. Gann did so much research for this book that it easily could have drowned in a barrage of historical detail. But instead it’s so well-crafted and tightly edited that it hums along with just the right combination of fast-paced action and historical context. Review by Kali.
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