The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

by David Grann

“Explorers are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society. Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and a need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow men.”

The inland sea never existed, and these accounts made me aware of how much of the discovery of the world was based on failure rather than on success—on tactical errors and pipe dreams. The Society may have conquered the world, but not before the world had conquered its members.

Exploration, however, no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward, to what guidebooks and brochures called “camping and wilderness therapy” and “personal growth through adventure.”