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The #1 New York Times bestseller - now a major motion picture starring Charlie Hunnam, Tom Holland, Sienna Miller and Robert Pattinson.
In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.
Look for David Grann’s new book, Killers of the Flower Moon, available now.
- Sales Rank: #445 in Books
- Brand: Vintage
- Published on: 2010-01-26
- Released on: 2010-01-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .93" w x 5.19" l, .92 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: John Grisham Reviews The Lost City of Z
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, John Grisham has written twenty novels and one work of nonfiction, The Innocent Man. His second novel, The Firm, spent 47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, becoming the bestselling novel of 1991. The success of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation as the master of the legal thriller. His most recent novel, The Associate, was published in January 2009. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Lost City of Z:
In April of 1925, a legendary British explorer named Percy Fawcett launched his final expedition into the depths of the Amazon in Brazil. His destination was the lost city of El Dorado, the “City of Gold,” an ancient kingdom of great sophistication, architecture, and culture that, for some reason, had vanished. The idea of El Dorado had captivated anthropologists, adventurers, and scientists for 400 years, though there was no evidence it ever existed. Hundreds of expeditions had gone looking for it. Thousands of men had perished in the jungles searching for it. Fawcett himself had barely survived several previous expeditions and was more determined than ever to find the lost city with its streets and temples of gold.
The world was watching. Fawcett, the last of the great Victorian adventurers, was financed by the Royal Geographical Society in London, the world’s foremost repository of research gathered by explorers. Fawcett, then age 57, had proclaimed for decades his belief in the City of Z, as he had nicknamed it. His writings, speeches, and exploits had captured the imagination of millions, and reports of his last expedition were front page news.
His expeditionary force consisted of three men--himself, his 21-year-old son Jack, and one of Jack’s friends. Fawcett believed that only a small group had any chance of surviving the horrors of the Amazon. He had seen large forces decimated by malaria, insects, snakes, poison darts, starvation, and insanity. He knew better. He and his two companions would travel light, carry their own supplies, eat off the land, pose no threat to the natives, and endure months of hardship in their search for the Lost City of Z.
They were never seen again. Fawcett’s daily dispatches trickled to a stop. Months passed with no word. Because he had survived several similar forays into the Amazon, his family and friends considered him to be near super-human. As before, they expected Fawcett to stumble out of the jungle, bearded and emaciated and announcing some fantastic discovery. It did not happen.
Over the years, the search for Fawcett became more alluring than the search for El Dorado itself. Rescue efforts, from the serious to the farcical, materialized in the years that followed, and hundreds of others lost their lives in the search. Rewards were posted. Psychics were brought in by the family. Articles and books were written. For decades the legend of Percy Fawcett refused to die.
The great mystery of what happened to Fawcett has never been solved, perhaps until now. In 2004, author David Grann discovered the story while researching another one. Soon, like hundreds before him, he became obsessed with the legend of the colorful adventurer and his baffling disappearance. Grann, a lifelong New Yorker with an admitted aversion to camping and mountain climbing, a lousy sense of direction, and an affinity for take-out food and air conditioning, soon found himself in the jungles of the Amazon. What he found there, some 80 years after Fawcett’s disappearance, is a startling conclusion to this absorbing narrative.
The Lost City of Z is a riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure.
(Photo © Maki Galimberti)
A Q&A with Author David Grann
Question: When did you first stumble upon the story of Percy Fawcett and his search for an ancient civilization in the Amazon—and when did you realize this particular story had you in “the grip”?
David Grann: While I was researching a story on the mysterious death of the world’s greatest Sherlock Holmes expert, I came upon a reference to Fawcett’s role in inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World. Curious, I plugged Fawcett’s name into a newspaper database and was amazed by the headlines that appeared, including “THREE MEN FACE CANNIBALS IN RELIC QUEST” and tribesmen “Seize Movie Actor Seeking to Rescue Fawcett.” As I read each story, I became more and more curious--about how Fawcett’s quest for a lost city and his disappearance had captivated the world; how for decades hundreds of scientists and explorers had tried to find evidence of Fawcett’s missing party and the City of Z; and how countless seekers had disappeared or died from starvation, diseases, attacks by wild animals, or poisonous arrows. What intrigued me most, though, was the notion of Z. For years most scientists had considered the brutal conditions in the largest jungle in the world inimical to humankind, but more recently some archeologists had begun to question this longstanding view and believed that a sophisticated civilization like Z might have existed. Such a discovery would challenge virtually everything that was believed about the nature of the Amazon and what the Americas looked liked before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Suddenly, the story had every tantalizing element--mystery, obsession, death, madness--as well as great intellectual stakes. Still, I probably didn’t realize I was fully in the story’s “grip” until I told my wife that I planned to take out an extra life insurance policy and follow Fawcett’s trail into the Amazon.
Q: Tell us about the discovery of Fawcett’s previously unpublished diaries and logbooks.
DG: Researching the book often felt like a kind of treasure hunt and nothing was more exciting than coming across these materials in an old chest in the house of one of Fawcett’s grandchildren. Fawcett, who had been a British spy, was extremely secretive about his search for Z--in part because he didn’t want his rivals to discover the lost city before he did and in part because he feared that too many people would die if they tried to follow in his wake. These old, crumbling diaries and logbooks held incredible clues to both Fawcett’s life and death; what’s more, they revealed a key to his clandestine route to the Lost City of Z.
Q: In an attempt to retrace Fawcett’s journey, many scientists and explorers have faced madness, kidnapping, and death. Did you ever hesitate to go to the Amazon?
DG: I probably should have been more hesitant, especially after reading some of the diaries of members of other parties that had scoured the Amazon for a lost city. One seeker of El Dorado described reaching a state of “privation so great that we were eating nothing but leather, belts and soles of shoes, cooked with certain herbs, with the result that so great was our weakness that we could not remain standing.” In that expedition alone, some four thousand men perished. Other explorers resorted to cannibalism. One searcher went so mad he stabbed his own child, whispering, “Commend thyself to God, my daughter, for I am about to kill thee.” But to be honest, even after reading these accounts, I was so consumed by the story that I did not think much about the consequences--and one of the themes I try to explore in the book is the lethal nature of obsession.
Q: When you were separated from your guide Paolo on the way to the Kuikuro village and seemingly lost and alone in the jungle, what was going through your mind?
DG: Besides fear, I kept wondering what the hell I was doing on such a mad quest.
Q: Paolo and you made a game of imagining what happened to Fawcett in the Amazon. Without giving anything away about The Lost City of Z, I was wondering if you came away with any final conclusions?
DG: I don’t want to give too much away; but, after poring over Fawcett’s final letters and dispatches from the expedition and after interviewing many of the tribes that Fawcett himself had encountered, I felt as if I had come as close as possible to knowing why Fawcett and his party vanished.
Q: In his praise for your book, Malcolm Gladwell asks a “central question of our age”: “In the battle between man and a hostile environment, who wins?” Obviously, the jungle has won many times, but it seems man may be gaining. What are your thoughts on the deforestation taking place in the Amazon?
DG: It is a great tragedy. Over the last four decades in Brazil alone, the Amazon has lost some two hundred and seventy thousand square miles of its original forest cover--an area bigger than France. Many tribes, including some I visited, are being threatened with extinction. Countless animals and plants, many of them with potential medicinal purposes, are also vanishing. One of the things that the book explores is how early Native American societies were often able to overcome their hostile environment without destroying it. Unfortunately, that has not been the case with the latest wave of trespassers.
Q: You began this journey as a man who doesn’t like to camp and has “a terrible sense of direction and tend[s] to forget where [you are] on the subway and miss[es] [your] stop in Brooklyn.” Are you now an avid outdoorsman?
DG: No. Once was enough for me!
Q: Early in the book, you write, “Ever since I was young, I’ve been drawn to mystery and adventure tales.” What have been some of your favorite books--past and present--that fall into this category?
DG: I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, and every few years go back and read the stories again. I do the same with many of Joseph Conrad’s novels, including Lord Jim. I’m always amazed at how he produced quest novels that reflected the Victorian era and yet seem to have been written with the wisdom of a historian looking back in time. As for more contemporary authors, I read a lot of crime fiction, especially the works of George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly. I also relish books, such as Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, that cleverly play with this genre. Finally, there are the gripping yarns written by authors like Jon Krakauer and Nathaniel Philbrick-—stories that are all the more spellbinding because they are true.
Q: Brad Pitt and Paramount optioned The Lost City of Z in the spring. Any updates?
DG: They have hired a screenwriter and director and seem to be moving forward at a good clip.
Q: What are you working on now?
DG: I recently finished a couple of crime stories for The New Yorker, including one about a Polish author who allegedly committed murder and then left clues about the real crime in his novel. Meanwhile, I’m hoping to find a tantalizing story, like The Lost City of Z, that will lead to a new book.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
DG: Just that I hope that readers will enjoy The Lost City of Z and find the story of Fawcett and his quest as captivating as I did.
(Photo © Matt Richman)
Look Inside The Lost City of Z
Click on thumbnails for larger images
Percy Harrison Fawcett was considered “the last of the individualist explorers”—those who ventured into blank spots on the map with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose. He is seen here in 1911, the year of his fourth major Amazon expedition. (Copyright © R. de Montet-Guerin) Fawcett mapping the frontier between Brazil and Bolivia in 1908. (Courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society) Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice, Fawcett’s main rival, was a multimillionaire “as much at home in the elegant swirl of Newport society as in the steaming jungles of Brazil.” (Courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society) A member of Dr. Rice’s 1919-20 expedition deploys a wireless telegraphy set—an early radio—allowing the party to receive news from the outside world. (Courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society)
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city. Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction. He became interested in Fawcett while researching another story, eventually venturing into the Amazon to satisfy his all-consuming curiosity about the explorer and his fatal mission. Largely about Fawcett, the book examines the stranglehold of passion as Grann's vigorous research mirrors Fawcett's obsession with uncovering the mysteries of the jungle. By interweaving the great story of Fawcett with his own investigative escapades in South America and Britain, Grann provides an in-depth, captivating character study that has the relentless energy of a classic adventure tale. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Ever since Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it has been difficult to think of a journey up a river into a jungle as anything but a journey to discover oneself. Similarly, reviewers seemed to find what they wanted in The Lost City of Z, even if some admitted that Grann's adventures, at times tedious, were not nearly as perilous or as larger-than-life as Fawcett's. Some critics read it as a boys' adventure story, tripping over themselves to find adjectives fit for Fawcett's derring-do. Others preferred to focus on Grann's somewhat ironic attempt to seek Z himself. And finally, some critics had it both ways, since, by the end of the book, Grann claims to have actually found Z, or something like it, with only British writer Simon Winchester willing to cry "the horror!" at his American colleague's lack of skepticism.Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
Most helpful customer reviews
38 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
History, adventure, science, and action all rolled into one! And its non-fiction?
By mparker
I loved reading this book because of its diversity. You get a well rounded history from multiple accounts of the many cursed expeditions into the Amazon. The crazy men who dared to do it (both present and past), violent tribal peoples (though you understand why they're so hostile to foreigners), the nearly impassable Amazon terrain, the odd and bizarre creatures that reside their, and in the end, a plausible archaeologically based theory behind why people thought there was a large rich city once in the Amazon. Like all things, people's imaginations run wild, but the author also brings you back down the earth with the reality of the jungle which left me with the overall conclusion that these grandiose theories of a Lost City of Z were really just grand exaggerations of much more practical evidence of a fairly developed, but long lost, past civilization.
Some people criticize the book for only getting to the final expedition at the very end of the book. But I believe this criticism is unwarranted. You can't just jump into the final expedition without getting the backstory and context of the people, place, and time. I feel the author did a marvelous job of jumping around and pacing the book, so that when you get to the final expedition, you're well versed in the context and prepared to understand why things went down the way they did.
Fantastic read, and I shall keep this book as a permanent fixture in my collection. Too bad I only got it in paperback... dang.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
It Sucked Me In
By Nancy Crays
I rarely read nonfiction and did not plan to read this book, but my husband insisted I read it before our recent trip to the Amazon and I'm glad I did. The book is really two stories. The first one is the life story of Victorian explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett who was a member of the Royal Geographical Society. Originally, Fawcett was hired to map the borders between Bolivia and Brazil, but he mapped far more than that over the years.
Fawcett and his crew of explorers faced great dangers. In those days the Amazon jungle or rain forest was home to many insects such as mosquitos that carried horrible diseases, such as dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, and maggots that invaded their bodies. There were no preventatives, no antibiotics. Fawcett rarely got sick, but his men did and many died. It didn't help that he drove his men to hike through the thick jungle and mud for unreasonable long hours with little or no food even when they were extremely ill
In addition, they had were exploring in uncharted rain forests and rivers without the aide of a GPS or a cellphone or satellite phone. There were no computers or Internet. Furthermore there were tribes who liked to kill outsiders.
During these years, Fawcett heard tales of a lost city in the interior of the Amazon basin that many called El Dorado. Fawcett called it Z. He became obsessed with finding this lost city. On his final exploration, he took his son and his son's friend and they looked for the lost city. Much of what happened during Fawcett's trips was documented in journals kept by him and those who were with him. Furthermore they sent letters home occasionally.
David Grann who was writing for The New Yorker, decided to go to the Amazon in the 1990s to learn what happened to Fawcett 70 years previously and to see if the lost city even existed. Grann spent much time doing research and got access to letters and other documents that others never had seen. Despite medical and technological advances and the destruction of much of the rain forest, Grann had some harrowing times and became about as obsessed with his mission as Fawcett had. I actually became more engrossed in Grann's story.
It was interesting to see how even more rain forest had disappeared when we went on the Amazon and Ucayali rivers this summer. I highly recommend this book for those planning a trip to the Amazon basin and for those interested in the history of the area.
39 of 42 people found the following review helpful.
The story of an extraordinary man with a singular obsession, exploring deadly terrain. Very compelling.
By Michael Sullivan
David Grann has produced an insightful and extremely suspenseful book that... well, it covers a few things. The primary narrative that drives the book is an examination of the life and adventures of Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in the early 20th century searching for a spectacular (and possibly apocryphal) city in Brazil. Grann also discusses some of the other ill-fated attempts to reach Z, as well as his own attempt to recreate Fawcett's route through the Amazonian jungle.
Sure, it's a history book -- a subject that some readers would find dry. But Fawcett makes for an incredibly compelling subject, with the constitution of a superhero and a singular, obsessive focus. There were specific passages recounting Fawcett's expeditions that seem almost cinematic in nature; it was no surprise to see that the rights have already been optioned by a major film studio. Grann also manages to include a lot of information from primary sources, and is even able to point out an instance where Fawcett falsified his own notes to keep others off his trail. The notes that Fawcett took on his journeys are vivid: for instance, your skin will be crawling from the battles the explorers fought with various insects.
The book as a whole is a real page-turner. it keeps you as invested as any contemporary adventure work by Krakauer or Junger. The only reason I even considered a four-star review (rather than the five I eventually decided upon) is the book's final chapters aren't quite as rich. Grann narrates himself following Fawcett's footsteps, but a lot of the impact is diminished because of the near-century of technological advances, and because Grann pales as a protagonist compared to Fawcett. That's not meant as an insult, by the way -- Fawcett was basically an action hero. There is an interesting piece of knowledge gained at the end that redeems Grann's journey somewhat. Still, I would have preferred another 25 pages on Fawcett.
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