The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001U2MTK6 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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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 20th 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, Fawcett embarked with his 21-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. 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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- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 10 hours and 6 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: February 24, 2009
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001U2MTK6
I'm a huge fan of classic and contemporary tales of adventure, but I don't normally read much non-fiction. However, David Grann's The Lost City of Z sounded too irresistible to ignore. My instincts were right; it ranks among the best thrillers I've read. What a story!
Actually, it's two stories. The first is the life story of Victorian explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett. A member of the Royal Geographical Society, Fawcett was an explorer in the days when much of the globe was truly unknown. He came from a family of modest means, and began his career in the British military stationed in Ceylon. But he achieved worldwide acclaim as an explorer of the Amazonian jungles and river ways.
Grann's book is most concerned with Fawcett's last fateful expedition, but throughout the first couple hundred pages, he recounts Fawcett's entire career and it's enthralling. It's hard to imagine the bravery it took to strike out into the absolute unknown--with little or no communication with civilization--sometimes for years at a time. Fawcett and his companions routinely faced starvation, bloodthirsty indigenous tribes, horrific insect infestations, lethal tropical diseases, deadly white-water rapids, poisonous snakes, anacondas, piranha, and other terrifying creatures. If, for instance, you're wondering what's so horrific about insects, then you haven't been treated to a graphic description of what it's like when a living human is infested with maggots beneath their skin.
Fawcett and his men (always men) faced death constantly, and it seems that he must have lost hundreds of men in the course of his career. Perhaps not hundreds. Fawcett, unlike many of his contemporaries believed in keeping expeditions small. He was far more successful than most.
The obstacles to proving his theory were overwhelming. As a young man Percy Fawcett became convinced that contrary to conventional wisdom a highly advanced civilization once thrived in the extremely hostile climes of the Amazon. Fawcett made his first foray into the region around 1910 and laid the groundwork for his world famous expedition in 1925. It was a journey from which he and his two associates would never return. "The Lost City of Z: A Tale Of Deadly Obsession In The Amazon" chronicles the life of this extraordinary individual and reveals just what he was up against in proving the existence of the ancient city he dubbed simply "Z".
Author David Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, unearthed the story of Percy Fawcett in 2004 while doing research for another project. Before long he found himself totally consumed by the Fawcett saga. He talked himself into travelling to Brazil in an attempt to find out once and for all just what happened to Percy Fawcett, his son Jack and Jack's best friend Raleigh Rimell some eight decades earlier. Suffice to say that what he discovered is a real eye-opener. While putting together "The Lost City of Z" David Grann met with members of the Fawcett family and gained access to a cache of Percy's personal papers that were previously unpublished. These documents allowed the author to gain a remarkable insight into the charactor and thought processes of his subject. The inventory of items Grann had the opportunity to look at included Fawcett's diaries and logbooks, the correspondance of his closest exploring companions and his most bitter rivals as well as journals from his military unit during the first World War. As such, it is safe to say that you will find information in this book you simply won't see anywhere else.
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