The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon

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His charisma and competence were sufficient to garner the backing of the Royal Geological Society and later the U. Its quiet, shaded halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary, but rather the greatest natural battlefield on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every day. He knows how to weave a yarn and draw the reader in; I was captivated by this story of one man’s obsession with finding the lost city of Z.

And I don’t want to hear about global warming or any nonsense about generating most of the world’s oxygen. What I enjoyed most about Grann’s account is that he reveals his protagonist’s flaws along with his idolized characteristics. But he got obsessed with finding the mythical ruins of an El Dorado-type city and led his son and another poor bastard to some kind of gruesome deaths. I read this in anticipation of a book talk and am now dying to find out why this particular work was chosen. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.Unfortunately, as with many explorers, his belief in himself, his obsession with his quest and his feelings of invincibility eventually caught up with him -- and he took two young men with him. If you manage to avoid getting a fish lodged in your orifices, you still have disease to contend with. perhaps really you’re a fan of quirky travel, adventure, and outdoorsy exotica of the type to be found in Douglas Adams’ amusing Last Chance to See or Jon Krakauer’s harrowing exposes of human folly and hubris Into the Wild or Into Thin Air and hoping to find here a biography of intrepid Edwardian explorer Fawcett that will match Adam Hochschild’s telling of Lord Stanley’s disturbing exploits in the Belgian Congo in King Leopold’s Ghost.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON was shortlisted for the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. My favourite sections were those in which Grann tells his parallel tale of discovering Fawcett and developing his own obsessions about the explorer’s unknown fate.

There's the threat of piranhas, electric eels, venomous snakes, vampire fish, vampire bats, disease-carrying mosquitoes, dangerous spiders, poisonous plants. The Lost City of Z was reviewed by Rich Cohen in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, who said it was "a powerful narrative, stiff-lipped and Victorian at the center, trippy at the edges, as if one of those stern men of Conrad had found himself trapped in a novel by García Márquez. The adaptation, directed by James Gray, who also wrote the screenplay, [13] premiered on October 15, 2016, at the 54th New York Film Festival. It] has everything to fire the imagination: Romance, nostalgia, bravery, monomania, hardship, adventure, science, tragedy, mystery. The character of Fawcett unfurled as the book progressed from perfect English gentleman, a fearless army colonel to an accomplished explorer but so obsessed with his cause that it rendered him bankrupt during his last days.