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A stirring tale of lost civilizations, avarice, madness and everything else that makes exploration so much fun. As New Yorker staff writer and debut author Grann notes, the British explorer Percy Fawcett's exploits in jungles and atop mountains inspired novels such as Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and his character is the tutelary spirit of the Indiana Jones franchise. Fawcett in turn was nurtured by his associations with fabulists such as Doyle and H. Rider Haggard, whose talisman he bore into the Amazonian rainforest. Working from a buried treasure in the form of long-lost diaries, Grann reconstructs the 1925 voyage Fawcett undertook with his 21-year-old son to find the supposed Lost City of Z, which, by all accounts, may have been El Dorado, the fabled place of untold amounts of Inca gold. Many a conquistador had died looking for the place, though in their wake, "after a toll of death and suffering worthy of Joseph Conrad, most archaeologists had concluded that El Dorado was no more than a delusion." Fawcett was not among them, nor was his rival, a rich American doctor named Alexander Hamilton Rice, who was hot on the trail. Fawcett determined that a small expedition would be more likely to survive than a large one. Perhaps so, but the expedition notes record a hell of humid swamps and "flesh and carrion-eating bees [and] gnats in clouds rendering one's food unpalatable by filling it with their filthy bodies, their bellies red and disgustingly distended with one's own blood." It would get worse, we imagine, before Fawcett and his party disappeared, never to be seen again. Though, as Grann writes, they were ironically close to the object of their quest. A colorful tale of true adventure, marked by satisfyingly unexpected twists, turns and plenty of dark portents.
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Subjects
Travel, Death and burial, El Dorado, Explorers, Description and travel, History, Nonfiction, English, Discovery and exploration, Ontdekkingsreizen, nyt:hardcover-nonfiction=2009-03-15, New York Times bestseller, South America, Expeditions & Discoveries, Fawcett, percy harrison, 1867-1925?, Amazon river and valley, description and travel, Large type books, Drama, New York Times reviewedPlaces
Amazon River RegionShowing 5 featured editions. View all 17 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
La cité perdue de Z: Une expédition légendaire au coeur de l'Amazonie
2017-03-14, Points
2757865137 9782757865132
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The Lost City of Z
2009, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Electronic resource
in English
0385529228 9780385529228
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3
The lost city of Z: a legendary British explorer's deadly quest to uncover the secrets of the Amazon
2009, Simon & Schuster
in English
1847374360 9781847374363
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4
The lost city of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon
2009, Doubleday
in English
- 1st ed.
0385513534 9780385513531
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5
The lost city of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon
2009, Doubleday
in English
- 1st ed.
0385513534 9780385513531
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-326) and index.
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Work Description
A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z?In 1925 Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humankind. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions helped inspire Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his twenty-one-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilization--which he dubbed "Z"--existed. Then he and his expedition vanished.Fawcett's fate--and the tantalizing clues he left behind about "Z"--became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness. For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party and the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. As David Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's "green hell." His quest for the truth and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett's fate and "Z" form the heart of this complex, enthralling narrative.
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- Created June 15, 2022
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March 17, 2024 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
March 17, 2024 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
October 22, 2023 | Edited by Tom Morris | Merge works |
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June 15, 2022 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from Internet Archive item record |