The Lost City of Z

I thought this book was underwhelming. Nonetheless, a fine read.

In the prior month, I finished David Grann's other book, The Wager, Alfred Lansing's Endurance and Peter Fitzsimons' Mutiny on the Bounty. All were epic tales, expertly written and enjoyed. This was not that.

This book falls somewhat flat, partly because it doesn't have a satisfying ending and partly because the narrative arc is loose. We never find Fawcett's trail; we only get the author travelling into the jungle briefly to talk to some Indigenous folks. It's true that sometimes there isn't a satisfying ending, which is fine, but I feel the author sets the book up to uncover something and does no such thing. I think there is an argument to say this ought to have just been a book about the life of Fawcett, not a history-cum-travel-book that tries to tie two loose threads together.

For all its flaws, the book is still readable, interesting enough and short. I never knew about Fawcett's life before I began, and I enjoyed it in that regard. Moreover, it made me realise I have no appetite for travelling deep into the jungle. I will give it to Fawcett, exploration in the Amazon is hard. It is brutal. I have no envy for their lives like I did with those travelling to Tahiti in Fitzsimons' Bounty.

One thing I did enjoy is the author's attempt to help the reader understand the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon. He gives us a good, albeit brief, explanation of these people and their ancient and impressive lives before the Colombian Exchange, after which millions died due to Old World diseases.

I would still recommend this book to those who want to learn more about Amazon exploration, as it is a quick read. Any longer, and I would have felt the cost-benefit might lend itself to an alternate read.

Grann's books are pretty fun if you can ignore every time he feels the need to insert himself as a character in the story (warning: you can't)

“You know, I had a lot of romantic notions about the jungle, and this kind of finished that”

3.5 rounded up

So, this is basically the biography of Percy Fawcett and his many attempts to map the Amazon rain forest and discover the lost city of Z or El Dorado or Golden City or whatever. Smattered in-between these tales of courage and daring, you've got bits about the author, David Grann as he prepares to follow in Fawcett's path.

For the most part this was really interesting but there were some moments of dullness along the way, probably the bits where we weren't in the Jungle. Highlights are the horrific details of how the Amazon can kill you, including being eaten from the inside out by various critters and bugs, 20ft anacondas, cannibals and much much more.

There's no conclusion to the story, the mystery lives on and that's absolutely find because we all know the only way to find the Lost City Of Z is to find the Stargate and the DHD.

3.5

I found myself drawn further and further into this absorbing true story the more I read. Grann is so meticulous and thorough in his research, yet still has a style of writing that is engaging and reads like a good novel.
I was particularly shocked to learn how inhospitable the Amazon is, and by Grann's final discovery at the end of the book. I would recommend this book.

Entertaining adventure story. I didn't think the parts about the author's journey into the Amazon added much to the more interesting historic account. I also didn't enjoy the frequent hopping across the timeline. At times I was a bit confused.

A lost city. A missing explorer. This book screams for instant success.

Instead I'm shelving it at the 100 page mark. The premise is interesting, but the execution was surprisingly poor. It kept alternating between nonfiction and fiction style writing. True enough, the author did an incredible amount of research for the Faucet portion. It was the author's own chapters of his adventure that bored me. I would have enjoyed this much more if the story of faucet had been at the beginning and the author's story followed suit. Jumping between the two timelines was confusing and made it difficult to get into. I am still intrigued by faucet's journey and would love to see a movie based upon it. Sadly this book just needed to be shelved.

Think I will slot this one into the “Read a Travel Memoir” category for the 2017 Read Harder Challenge, although it's a travel memoir wrapped around the story of one of the last great British explorers, Percy Fawcett. The author attempts to discover the fate of Fawcett, who was obsessed with finding the Lost City of Z (or, El Dorado) and disappeared while doing so. Good riddance to the age of the great white explorer, I say, since invariably these obsessions wrecked families, triggered ecological disasters, and decimated native populations.

This was a really interesting read! Fawcett was basically a real-life Indiana Jones, and his exploration of the Amazon makes for a great tale of obsession and intrigue.

I really wanted to like this book, a lot. It has had so much fantastic press, and I've read a lot of great fiction and nonfiction set in the Amazon lately. However, the set up was just so disorganized. Grann tries to interweave the narratives of Percy Fawcett, the great Amazon explorer; subsequent expeditions looking for Fawcett and his own journey to the Amazon. This intertwining dilutes all three of the stories and is confusing to jump among. In addition, he discusses precise locations in the Amazon, but none of them are actually labelled on the map in the frontispiece.

The whole thing was so frustrating, because there actually is a really interesting story about survival, exploration and the age in which we knew so little about the world and had so few resources, but human curiosity drove us to investigate anyway. I wish that Grann had avoided the overdone move of going on his own Amazon expedition – it really didn't add to the story and the “denouement” in which he discovered “Z” was really him just meeting up with an archeologist from the University of Florida, who shared his research, which had already been published, anyway.

I did enjoy reading about the different Amazonian tribes and their beliefs, but wish that this book had been written by any actual expert (perhaps said Florida archeologist?) rather than a twee amateur.

The Lost City of Z is a great look at the historical expeditions that explored the Amazon, especially those of P.H. Fawcett and his search for Z, a city whose history is closely linked with the fabled land of El Dorado. This book is a fascinating look at the history, ecology, and anthropology of the region, while still being an entertaining and fascinating read. A perfect book for summer reading.

Pretty interesting and engaging, but the author tried to hard to make himself part of the story.

I went off with City of Z explorer Percy Fawcett across the Amazon jungle over spring break. Hiram and Percy led us through “insatiable thirst, skull-splitting headaches, and uncontrollable shivering,” as we were “spitting up mouthfuls of blood.” We tramped through lands with tribes of natives who “captured prisoners...they either kept...forever or roasted them to devour in their banquets.” Swimming in the waters of the Amazon were not only the feared piranhas, the so-called “vampire fish of Brazil,” but the horrifying candiru, a creature that is known for lodging in human orifices. Some of us contracted espundia, which “destroys the flesh around the mouth, nose, and limbs, as if the person were slowly dissolving” and others found maggots growing inside our open wounds.

Delightful, right?

Somehow I have survived all these horrors though we never found the golden City of Z.

Anyone who's ever come into contact with the Tintin comics, or has seen an Indiana Jones movie, or perhaps even read Rider Haggard or Rudyard Kipling's books, wants nothing more than to go on an adventure, deep into some dark, dripping rainforest, looking for signs of lost civilizations or discovering tribes that have not yet made contact with the rest of the world. And to a certain degree, history seems to prove that such discoveries, such adventures, are possible. One need only to look at Hiram Bingham and his discovery of Machu Picchu in the Urubamba Valley of Peru; or the discovery of Mayan temples and pyramids in the jungles of Belize and Guatemala; or even the beautiful, mysterious cities still being cut out of the jungles of Cambodia (Angkor Thom, specifically, is still being uncovered, and no one knows just how large it is), to know that, yes, the adventures one reads about in books might be entirely possible after all.

But what the books don't mention anything about are the dangers - and there are so many of them as to make the idea of a jungle adventure more terrifying than going to the Poles or trekking through the desert. Bear Grylls and others like him might make it look easy, but surviving the jungle is no mean feat. Too, Bear Grylls has the advantage of having been born in the twenty-first century, when technology and knowledge have become advanced enough that getting lost in the jungle is no longer as life-threatening as it used to be by a slightly smaller margin. In the early twentieth-century, this was not the case.

This was especially true for Lt. Colonel Percy Fawcett, one of the most notable - and notorious - Amazon explorers. Previous to the final and fatal exploration that claimed his life (though the circumstances of his death remain unknown), Fawcett had already led expeditions into unexplored parts of the Amazon, described as a “green hell” by many other explorers - or at least, those who made it out alive, as the Amazon was equally famous for consuming those who entered it and leaving no trace of them. But Fawcett had survived those expeditions, and many believed that he could survive one more - a most monumental one guaranteed to secure his place in history. On his last expedition, Fawcett - accompanied by his eldest son, Jack, and Jack's best friend - was determined to find the city he called Z, believed by many to be the legendary El Dorado. There was much fanfare and attention surrounding the expedition, and many believed that if anyone was going to find traces of a complex civilization in the depths of Amazonia, then Fawcett was most assuredly the one to find it.

But when Fawcett and his expedition team disappeared, they in their turn became the objects at the heart of several rescue, and then later on merely search, expeditions that claimed the lives of around a hundred would-be adventurers. Some of them simply wanted answers to what happened to the lost Fawcett expedition, but quite a few of them were determined to find Fawcett's City of Z, and they believed that if they could just figure out where Fawcett had last disappeared, then they too would be able to find Z.

Author David Grann became fascinated with the Fawcett expedition, and his book The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession with the Amazon juxtaposes his search for the fate of the Fawcett expedition with the tale of Fawcett's life, from the moment he decided that he wanted to be an explorer all the way to that final, fated expedition to find Z, including the ill-fated search-and-rescue expeditions that sought to find out what happened to him and his team. Along the way Grann describes the dangers of the Amazon as Fawcett and other explorers encountered them: the never-ending assault from gnats, mosquitoes, bot flies, and other dangerous creatures and parasites, as well as the fatal illnesses that result in contact with them; the extremes of heat, humidity, and rain; the delirium and madness that befall those weakened by their physical ailments; and of course, the anger of tribes who have had nothing but suffering and heartache from their encounters with white people. In Grann's own accounts of his adventures in the jungle to search for the Fawcett expedition, he makes it clear that these dangers still exist in the twenty-first century, though encroaching modernity have made his privations significantly less difficult when compared to those that Fawcett and other explorers describe in their accounts.

While the story Grann tells about his own adventures in the Amazon are well-told, and his narrative of Fawcett's story equally compelling - all the more so for its juxtaposition with Grann's own story - it's their combined account of what conquest and modernity have done and are still doing to the Amazon and its resident tribes that raise the most interest - and the most concern. Almost everyone is aware of what is happening to the Amazon, how much of it has disappeared and what that disappearance is doing to ecology and climate, but not a lot of people are aware of what this destruction is doing to the tribal inhabitants who call the jungle home, and whose cultures are so deeply entwined with it. Fawcett describes how disease and the exploitation of the jungle's rich resources - people included - have destroyed entire tribes and, moreover, made the remaining ones exceedingly hostile to white explorers, making Fawcett's goals even more difficult to achieve. The prevailing racism of the early twentieth-century certainly did not help matters much.

Grann's own account of what he sees in the Amazon in the twenty-first century is both a product and a continuation of what was done in the twentieth. The drive for modernity in the mold presented by first-world countries has resulted in hundreds of species of plants and animals, many of them unknown to science, going extinct as rivers are dammed and trees are cut down. Not only that, the tribes whose lives and cultures are built around the jungle as they knew it are seeing their holy sites destroyed and defiled, and their cultures evaporating all around them as they encounter - or are forced to encounter - the realities of of the world outside the jungle.

Grann's book could easily have devolved into an overt, didactic warning about the dangers of modernity and the negative results of globalization on the environment and on small tribal communities, but it does not. While Grann does make his concerns regarding those issues known, it is only a part of what makes The Lost City of Z and excellent book. In many ways, it is also a loving testament to the concept of “adventure” as it was understood in the twentieth century - something which has been lost, and which many people seek again and again. When people read Haggard or Kipling or Tintin, or watch Indiana Jones, they think of adventure in the same way that Fawcett, Livingstone, and all the rest of the early twentieth-century's explorers lived it - and, in many cases, died while living it. The book itself also reads very well and very quickly, like a proper adventure story, with the reader's hopes rising and falling in accordance with the triumphs and failures of both Fawcett and the author.

And, like any good adventure story, Grann does indeed find Z - or tantalizing hints of it, at any rate, that are nevertheless solidly grounded in scientific and archaeological fact. In a scene rather reminiscent of Stanley meeting Livingstone, Grann meets Michael Heckenberger, who has been adopted and taken up residence with an Amazonian tribe, and who has proven almost conclusively that Fawcett was right: Z does exist, though not in the form Fawcett and others searching for El Dorado in the Amazon thought. But Heckenberger has vindicated Fawcett's speculations regarding the existence of a large, complex civilization existing deep within the Amazon which he has named "Kuhikugu," and which he is currently exploring - in many ways continuing Fawcett's legacy.

Much praise has already been said for this book, and in many ways, the praise is quite true. For those of us who seek adventure in our lives, but for various reasons cannot - or maybe will not - go and find it, The Lost City of Z is a wonderful and well-told insight into the possibilities that were there, and perhaps still are, waiting for others to take them, and for the rest of us to read about.

Good book on tracing the steps of an explorer gone mad in search for a purported city in the Amazon. Basic premise is that the jungle is probably the hardest terrain to explore compared to anything else (e.g. desert, frozen tundra, etc).

Couldn't put it down. Real life Indiana Jones adventure with the investigative spirit of The Orchid Thief.

Meh.

I found this book to be completely compelling from start to finish. Grann weaves his dual narratives seamlessly together, and each story beautifully compliments the other. Fawcett is such a larger-than-life persona, almost mythological in nature, and yet Grann is able to prod beyond the surface to give readers a glimpse of the real man behind the myths. There are not many people in the world today with the same spirit of adventure and thirst for knowledge that Fawcett embodied, and reading about him was a fascinating experience.

I definitely recommend this book - it will appeal to a wide range of readers, and a little escape into the jungle might be just what you need to warm your chilly winter night!

What a cracking good read this was!! A very well researched and well written adventure tale that had me enthralled from page one! The author does an amazing job of moves seamlessly between the story of Colonel Fawcett and his present day hunt for answers ans his attention to detail is superb. This has definitely been one of my top reads so far this year!

A celebrity of his time, explorer Percy Fawcett's last adventure was deep into the Amazon. Along with him on the trip was his son, Jack, and his son's best friend, Raleigh Rimell. The trio were never heard from again.

Author David Grann retells their story, with the events that led up to their expedition and the tales of the many who went in search of them. Despite the promise of adventure and all the hype surrounding this book, I didn't get into it. Grann's background is in journalism and it shows: much of the book felt like an overly extended article in the Wall Street Journal. The backstory dragged on until I was bored. When it finally picked up the pace, it was nearly over.

I understand some of the appeal found in this book. Primarily, there is an unsolved mystery. Further, there is a journalist who takes great strides in research and “front-line” journalism to get at the heart of the story. Admittedly, Fawcett's story should be told and Grann was a great choice to do it. I would argue, however, that it would be a much better read as a concise five-part story in a popular newspaper or journal. As it is stands, The Lost City of Z is an arduous trek through an uncharted jungle of boredom which a reader does not hope to become lost in.

This is a Pretty Good™ book. It's essentially a biography of Percy Fawcett, a fascinating British explorer who made several trips into the Amazon rainforest and eventually made a final trip with his son and a friend from which they never returned. The Amazon rainforest is a crazy place. It's so unlike the Arctic where you can a. freeze, b. starve or c. fall into a crevasse. Adventuring into the Amazon means a likely encounter with any one of a thousand exotic deaths. You might starve, but it's just as likely that you'll be creatively tortured (or bluntly shot) to death by natives harboring a righteous indignation towards the whites who invaded their lands and enslaved their relatives to extract rubber. You might also face death by malaria or dysentery or fever. You could get eaten by piranhas or ants or stung to death by bees or mosquitos. Then again, you could get lucky and make it out only to die months or years later of side effects related to your trip. Whatever the case, it's a dangerous place and the people who make it out (and those who don't) generally have some extraordinary stories to tell about their experiences.The author of The Lost City of Z is no exception. Although Grann's Amazon story pales in comparison with that of Fawcett, it's interesting to read about a guy with no experience whatsoever heading down to Brazil to research Fawcett's expedition then enter the jungle himself in search of Fawcett's bones (or at least his legacy). The Lost City of Z has quite a bit of trivia (for example there is a significant amount on spiritualism) and history, a few interesting side stories and a decent description of the perils exploring the Amazon. It's not a Great™ book, the writing is fairly bland and the story wanders a bit too much but it's probably worth reading. If I were to do it again though, I'd probably go to the source and read [b:Exploration Fawcett 1297201 Exploration Fawcett Percy Fawcett http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182572451s/1297201.jpg 1286347] and get it in his own words.