Pros: Unputdownable real-life tale. The line, "You can't make this stuff up" was made for this.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: A Victorian Hero killed by manic obsession. The unlikeliest of modern-day investigators unravels a mystery that cost hundreds of lives. The terror of the Amazon. What's not to like?
NFP's Full Review: David Grann - The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly...
In his outstanding account of his search for the story behind the mysterious disappearance in the Amazon in 1925 of renowned British explorer Percy Fawcett, author David Grann has performed a neat trick. By writing parallel stories -- the reconstruction of Fawcett's life, times and obsession with the Amazon on the one hand, and Grann's own modern day obsession with Fawcett's unexplained disappearance -- Grann has deftly contrasted a Victorian world filled with images of exciting, unexplored lands, with today's technology-filled world replete with electronic Google maps and GPS technology at our fingertips.
The result is that "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" is a suspenseful, rip-roaring tale on both accounts. Fawcett was a true real-life Hero of his times, possessing all the strength and bravery and weaknesses and foibles one would expect of a man who was, literally, the last of the great individual British explorers. The type ended with him.
For his part, Grann -- a self-described paunchy shlub of a writer for the New Yorker magazine who could get lost walking around the block and could barely climb two flights of stairs -- was the least likely person to solve the mystery.
But helix-like, they were bound by the same affliction: obsession. Hence, an unlikely connection that has yielded a gripping book.
THE BOOK: Grann's book provides an intimate look at the making of a turn-of-the-century British explorer.
Percy Fawcett's life was never fulfilled if he wasn't living on the edge of death somewhere remote. From his younger years as a military officer searching for treasure during his time off in what was then Ceylon, and on into adulthood, life wasn't worth living if it wasn't at risk. By the time he was hooked on the Amazon in the early 20th century after his first trip to map out geographical borders there, Fawcett's fascination with the jungle had turned into an obsession that would eventually cost him everything including the life of his son Jack.
When he had used up all of his and his family's money, he turned to the Royal Geographic Society for support, and finally toward the end, to funding from unscrupulous newspaper chains "buying" exclusive reports from him, in order to feed his addiction.
Initially a popular hero celebrated throughout the British Empire for his bravery and pluck and hated by his competitors who could not match his exploits, by the end Fawcett had become an object of scorn for his failure to bring home the ultimate prize he sought so desperately: proof of the existence of an El Dorado in the heart of the Amazon. It was a quest that had cost thousands of lives dating back to the Spanish explorers of the 16th century, and would cost hundreds more after his disappearance as explorer team after explorer team tried to figure out what happened to him and his "Lost City." Fawcett became so paranoid that someone else would discover the Lost City that he began writing his records in code, hence his name "Z" for the elusive city.
The villain in this story -- or hero, depending on your point of view -- is the Amazon itself, a singularly inhospitable region of unimaginable size, power, beauty...and terror. Time after time Fawcett would emerge from his forays minus several of his best team members. Most died horrible deaths.
As Grann writes, Fawcett "was the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose. For nearly two decades, stories of his adventures had captivated the public's imagination: how he had survived in the South American wilderness without contact with the outside world; how he was ambushed by hostile tribesmen, many of whom had never before seen a white man; how he battled piranhas, electric eels, jaguars, crocodiles, vampire bats, and anacondas, including one that almost crushed him; and how he emerged with maps of regions from which no previous expedition had returned."
Each expedition was a nightmare of bugs and deadly creatures. There were ants that could eat through fabric; chiggers that fed on human flesh; millipedes that squirted cyanide; worms that entered the skin and caused blindness; so-called "kissing bugs" that entered human lips and surfaced in the victims' brains 20 years later. Fawcett's letters told of needle-like fish that swam deep into men's penises and hooked themselves in with spines, causing excruciating death. He recounted wonders no one has ever been able to confirm: snakes that flew through the forest, singing.
But Fawcett plowed on undeterred, until he disappeared in 1925 without a trace with his strapping son Jack on the trip he swore would be the one that would reveal Z.
For his part Grann pored through every record he could find on Fawcett, and interviewed surviving family members and former colleagues. He finally travelled to the Amazon and made his way to the Xingu region where Fawcett was last seen. His search was so methodical that in a remote Indian village he actually located the person most likely to have been the last human to see Fawcett alive. In the process, in a conclusion that is spell-binding, Grann explains his compelling theory about what happened to Fawcett, and the supreme irony surrounding his quest for Z.
We are left in awe at the combination of majesty and manic obsession that drove big men of an earlier age to great feats, only to bring them to their knees. And the irony of our own ability to use today's technology -- as well as the rape of the slowly-diminishing Amazon for rubber -- to solve mysteries once considered unsolvable is not lost on us or Grann.
After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer Grann set out to solve the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th centur...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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