The Lost City Of Z, by David Grann
I recently read this book, for a few days I couldn’t put it down. It a true story based on the authors obsessive quest to figure out the story behind legendary explorer Perry Fawcett’s disappearance.If you’re into true action and exploration stories, this a amazing tale. The book goes through, in detail, all of Fawcett’s early explorations of the Amazon jungle up to the his last one with his son, which he became missing. Fawcett was in search of El Dorado, an either a lost or mythical city that Spanish Conquistador’s spoke of seeing in the 17th century. El Dorado, translates to “the golden one” and was how the Conquistdors referred to the cheif of the mythical city, not the actual place. Tales of a chief that would spray himself in gold dust and and abundance of treasure.
After many expeditions, speaking to many tribes, and extensive research of the original spanish expiditions, Fawcett believed he knew the origin of the lost city. On his last expedition in 1925 with his son, and son’s friend the team failed to return, sparking a whirlwind of rescue missions. Most of the rescues failed and 100’s of people died in the jungle’s harsh conditions. They would usually be literally eaten alive by insects, and the ones that remained returned empty handed.
The author sets out on a mission, after becoming obsessed with the story, to follow Fawcett’s last foot steps in hopes of finding what happened on his expedition. Having new clues that were unavailable to other rescue missions, like access to letters and documents passed down through Fawcett’s family.
Fawcett’s story is a romantic tale of one the last true lone Victorian explorers, shortly before modern technology, like Airplanes, that made mapping the world extremely easy and far less dangerous.
Good interview with the author and place to purchase on Amazon.com
Brad Pitt’s production company has plans to make this book into a movie with Pitt staring as Fawcett. I can only hope that it becomes a great film and not some over the top, big money hollywood crap. -link
