The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon in Daily Show / Colbert Report / Nightly Show / The Opposition

Jun 14, 2013 Pang rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, history, around-the-world-in-80-books

What possess a person to go into the Amazon knowing that it's crawling with diseases and creatures that could kill you? That I don't know. But I can't say I blame anyone who wants to be "the first" to do anything. "Every quest, we are led to believe, has a romantic origin."

I've never heard of Z nor of Percy Fawcett, but after reading this book I want to know what happened to him, too! He sounds like a fascinating man. Born in 1867 and a military man, "he was the last of the great Victorian explo What possess a person to go into the Amazon knowing that it's crawling with diseases and creatures that could kill you? That I don't know. But I can't say I blame anyone who wants to be "the first" to do anything. "Every quest, we are led to believe, has a romantic origin."

I've never heard of Z nor of Percy Fawcett, but after reading this book I want to know what happened to him, too! He sounds like a fascinating man. Born in 1867 and a military man, "he was the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into an unchartered realms with a little more than a machete, a compass, and almost a divine sense of purpose." He became obsessed with the Amazon after his expeditions to redraw Bolivia-Brazil border. He was convinced "that an ancient, highly cultured people still existed in the Brazilian Amazon and that their civilization was so old and so sophisticated it would forever alter the Western view of the Americas" (since then, and even now, we didn't know much about the various Indian tribes, but we simply just classified them as "salvages.") So he named this lost world the City of Z.

At time of his fateful expedition in 1925, he was said that "although his hair was thinning and his mustache was flecked with white, he was so fit that he could walk for days with little, if any, rest or nourishment." People talked about how he'd battle anaconda, piranhas, and other jungle creatures and survived to tell it. So if anyone was able to find this Lost City of Z, it would be Fawcett, the Royal Geographic Society believed. Just look at his picture, he seems like nothing could shake him up! He reminded me of Curly from City Slickers: "Did you see how leathery he was? He was like a saddlebag with eyes!"
Percy Fawcett

Everything about the Amazon just doesn't sound appealing to me. There was vampire fish that made piranha sounded like kitten. There was a pit viper, one of the most venomous snakes in the Americas: one bite will cause a person to bleed from the eyes and become a corpse piece-by-piece. And you could get maggots growing under your skin and die. Oh, goody. Sounds delightful - sign me up!

Obviously it takes a certain kind of person and certain kind of personality to desire for an Amazon adventure, knowing what lies ahead. But this is not like camping in your local state forest preserve, this is sleeping in a hammock with all sort of things that want to eat you alive watching you. And we're talking about the early 1920s when the expedition took place. There was zero modern amenity and gadget! You had to have skills - real skills, like how to make a pillow out of mud, as Fawcett had. Or how to make friend with cannibal Indian tribe without breaking down and crying like a little girl. But yet the Amazon attracted, and continuing to attract, all sort of explorers and expeditions. There are oil and rubber, those are money to be made. Plus the dream of finding El Dorado.

I know I wouldn't last a day, but I get the obsession especially when there wasn't a lot of places left unexplored when Fawcett made his fateful expedition. To emerge from the Amazon victorious for the second time, when hundreds had perished, would certainly make him a bigger hero than he was already. Your name is forever etched into history. But anthropologists have different opinions on whether the Amazon could support massive population, let alone a "sophisticated civilization." Some say no way, while others are more optimistic. And if you're a scientist, wouldn't you want to risk it to prove it once and for all?! I could see it. I get it.

They typically have one common thread: obsession. They are about ordinary people driven to do extraordinary things — things that most of us would never dare — who get some germ of an idea in their heads that metastasizes until it consumes them.

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Jun 15, 2009 Nicholas rated it it was amazing

When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher once asked, "If you could live in any time period, which would it be?" She listened quite raptly to students as they explained where and when they would want to be, and when she came to me, she cut me off, saying "I bet you'd want to live in the future, Nick." I guess it was all the Orwell and Bradbury I was carrying around, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed. The truth was, in fact, that I'd much rather have lived in the past. To a certai When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher once asked, "If you could live in any time period, which would it be?" She listened quite raptly to students as they explained where and when they would want to be, and when she came to me, she cut me off, saying "I bet you'd want to live in the future, Nick." I guess it was all the Orwell and Bradbury I was carrying around, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed. The truth was, in fact, that I'd much rather have lived in the past. To a certain degree, I guess that's still true, and for pretty much the same reason: I love adventure. In the world of GPS and satellite imagery, there is hardly a single square meter that hasn't been mapped, identified and catalogued on the entire planet (barring undersea), which kind of takes the mystery and hope out of the world just a little. It removes the idea of the exotic, as ethnocentric as that may seem from a post-modernist world view. I think one of the major things modern society suffers from is an insatiable desire, and no outlet for, adventure and discovery, which compels us to live vicariously through others and through entertainment, which are about the only places (except, I guess if you're an astronaut) you can find "undiscovered" country.

What I loved most about Grann's Lost City of Z is that it contains cultural commentary just like the anecdote above with some serious amateur history and investigative work into a really glamorous, if you're a Westerner, period of exploration and discovery. I think there is really something to be said about journalists doing historian work. Unlike historians, both modern and ancient, journalists understand the concept of writing for an audience that is not buried nose-deep in the terminology and technicalities of their profession. Z is very well-written, and Grann follows a pretty typical narrative structure, recounting both Percy Fawcett's life and eventual disappearance into the Amazon in search of a lost civilization and his own personal account of his own formative experiences, his research, and eventually his own trip into the Amazon, which ends up being suspenseful, humorous, and academic without being overly stuffy. I flipped pretty excitedly through the pages of this book as Grann touched my own inner child, and I began to get that same feeling that I had when watching an Indiana Jones movie (the old trilogy, not the Crystal Skull alien nonsense).

As I grew older, my love of history and discovery and anthropology and archeology was tempered by the realization that there were no grand, earthshattering, paradigm shifting discoveries left to be made. And that the life of a historian was far less glamorous than that of Indy. I love history. I find people fascinating. I find their stories, however mundane, as long as they are different from my own, fascinating. The Lost City of Z rekindled in me the fire to go out and discover. To research. To explore. And it's an amazing feeling. Seldom does a book give you a feeling, a glow, that transforms your character, and I believe that this is one.

Percy Fawcett's story is tragic, but romantic. A Victorian Age explorer, shedding the cultural constraints of English society and pursuing treasure and notoriety as a man among men, able to endure the world's harshest environment in the name of science and to simply challenge the unknown. Fawcett's life is filled with amazing coincidence, and even more amazing stories, making him seem like Indiana Jones come to life. Grann really did his homework and, as much as this book focuses on a mystery (What exactly happened to Fawcett on his last expedition into the Amazon from which he disappeared, never to be heard from again?), to his credit, Grann never allows for self-indulgence and inventiveness. A difficult task for any biographer or historian who sets out to KNOW, and find answers.

Even more surprising, there is some brilliant research and archeological findings presented toward the end of the book, where Fawcett's ultimate fate is discussed, that is really fascinating. A wealth of new research suggests that many of the legends of advanced civilizations in the heart of the Amazon (El Dorado's and the like), really aren't so far fetched. All historians love to indulge in the idea that there is some unknown branch of civilization, completely undiscovered, super advanced, that would completely change everything we thought we knew about humanity and historical development. The exciting thing about recent years in South American research, is that that hope, that fantasy even, is probably true. Screw Atlantis. Z is real, mostly, and though it's not made of solid gold and they don't have advanced alien technology, pre-Colombian Amazonian society was complex, vibrant and much, much more advanced than has ever been thought since Europeans first made contact almost 500 years ago.

This book is very readable for the non-historian, and even for people who are not history "buffs" (ugh - aka people who like the history chan---i mean the world war II channel). Like Fawcett's Z, Grann's work is really a relic of a bygone age, and one feels almost transported into the early 20th century and caught up in Fawcett's feverish pursuit of the undiscovered. A great book.

I got a library card from the local library, just recently reopened, to make myself stop buying books, but I'm already going to buy the first book I checked out. Fail. ...more

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Dec 12, 2010 Angel rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography-and-memoir, history

This was a very good read. There are two stories in one in this book. One is the story of Henry Percy Fawcett, a British explorer of the late 19th century/early 20th century. He is in the vein of other great explorers such as Shackleton or Stanley. His explorations took him to the Amazon, where he went to seek the mythical city of Z, the El Dorado conquistadores looked for. In 1925, he vanished without a trace. We move to the author who is on a quest not only to tell Fawcett's story, but to trac This was a very good read. There are two stories in one in this book. One is the story of Henry Percy Fawcett, a British explorer of the late 19th century/early 20th century. He is in the vein of other great explorers such as Shackleton or Stanley. His explorations took him to the Amazon, where he went to seek the mythical city of Z, the El Dorado conquistadores looked for. In 1925, he vanished without a trace. We move to the author who is on a quest not only to tell Fawcett's story, but to trace the explorer's path and find out his fate. Mind you that such an errand, trying to find Fawcett, has claimed the lives of at least 100 people.

If you like adventure tales and reading about explorers in the tradition of fiction works like H. Rider Haggard or Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Professor Challenger may have been inspired by Fawcett, then you will like this book. If you like reading about mysteries, you will probably like this book as well. The author wrote this in a way that it reads like a good adventure novel and biography all rolled up into one. It grips the reader from the beginning, and it does not let go. Even though you know Fawcett's fate from the start, you find yourself wondering if he will be found or not (I am not spoiling it). Fawcett himself was a larger than life explorer, the last of the great explorers before things like anthropology and archeology along with other specializations took shape as we know them today. Back then, it was a man, a machete, a compass, and off to the jungle to find whatever it was there, catalog it, and report on it. Thus Fawcett was trained in various skills to accomplish his task. And there are other cast members, his sons, his wife, other rival explorers, who add to the story. Meanwhile, the author embarks on his own adventure to seek out Fawcett's trail and fate. In the process, we not only get a history of a great explorer, but we also learn about some of the history of Amazon territory as well. We learn how modern science has advanced as well when it comes to studying native tribes and the jungle itself. We also get a glimpse of British mores and society during and right after the Victorian era. In other words, this is not only a riveting read, but you learn a few things as well.

It is early in the new year of 2011, but I think this may be one of the best books I will have read this year. I definitely recommend it. ...more

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Nov 01, 2010 Tracy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

It was so nice to read a book I actually enjoyed. It has been almost a year for me! I really liked this book, and actually would give it 4.5 stars if I could. I found this book to be very interesting and I have learned a lot about the amazon, archeologists, explorers, anthropologists, etc. Even the "notes" section gave me another work to read.

Occasionally the author jumps around a little within his sections... he likes the occasional tangent, but most of the time I didn't mind because he does it ...more

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Mar 07, 2010 Calen rated it liked it

An interesting tale about a man in a time not very far removed but worlds apart. The historical context is intriguing, as is the mythology surrounding the Amazon, a region I'm fairly naive of. So, while the story lacked finality and, I get the feeling, was written somewhat crudely and with insufficient information, the subject was well worth it to me. I'm sure my anthropologist friends would find it abhorrently full of holes and inaccuracies, but perhaps not. ...more

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