Volume 56, Number 8 · May 14, 2009
Mad Dreams in the Amazon
By Joshua Hammer
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
by David Grann
Doubleday, 339 pp., $27.50
In the winter of 1925, Percy Fawcett, a fifty-seven-year-old Amazon adventurer of fading reputation and unyielding ambition, embarked on a journey deep into the jungle for a final stab at glory. For years Fawcett had been obsessed with the quest for the ruins of a city he called 'Z'—an advanced civilization, supposedly hidden in the rain forest, whose discovery, he believed, would shatter conventional views of Amazon Indians. The search had consumed his finances, strained his marriage, and ostracized him from his peers. Tired and broke, forced to live with his family in an unheated, rented cottage outside London, Fawcett had pulled together funding from a consortium of American newspapers (as well as a last-minute cash infusion from John D. Rockefeller) and organized a make-or-break expedition to track down his El Dorado.
Review, 3516 words
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