The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon » (~)

DAVID GRANN is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker. He has written about everything from New York City’s antiquated water tunnels to the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, from the hunt for the giant squid to the mysterious death of the world’s greatest Sherlock Holmes expert. His stories have appeared in several Best American writing anthologies, and he has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic.

A masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, this blockbuster adventure takes listeners on a gripping journey into 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, but he and his expedition vanished. For decades, scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett s party and the lost City of Z. David Grann s quest for the truth and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett s fate and Z form the heart of this complex, enthralling narrative.


From the Compact Disc edition.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Percy Harrison Fawcett (he went by "Colonel," although he was only a lieutenant colonel) was among the last of the gentleman explorers, the generalists who set out with machete and sketchbook to fill in the blank spots on the globe. Born in 1867, Fawcett, a wiry teetotalling Englishman who seemed immune to malaria, did this work better and faster than anyone believed was possible: in 1906–7 he mapped the border between Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, an inhospitable jungle river; in the seven years that followed he was all over the Amazon, sometimes following rivers, sometimes hacking his way overland, always with only a small party to help him. His surveying trips won him a medal from the Royal Geographical Society and a certain amount of fame (although never any money); but the expedition for which he is best known is the one he undertook in 1925, accompanied only by his son Jack and Raleigh Rimmell, Jack's boyhood friend. They were looking for a legendary city, which Fawcett referred to in his notes as "Z." None of them ever returned.

Preface 3

1 We Shall Return 7

2 The Vanishing 17

3 The Search Begins 27

4 Buried Treasure 33

5 Blank Spots on the Map 48

6 The Disciple 58

7 Freeze-Dried Ice Cream, and Adrenaline Socks 66

8 Into the Amazon 71

9 The Secret Papers 89

10 The Green Hell 94

11 Dead Horse Camp 100

12 In the Hands of the Gods 102

13 Ransom 125

14 The Case for Z 129

15 El Dorado 148

16 The Locked Box 156

17 The Whole World Is Mad 160

18 A Scientific Obsession 183

19 An Unexpected Clue 193

20 Have No Fear 197

21 The Last Eyewitness 215

22 Dead or Alive 225

23 The Colonel's Bones 244

24 The Other World 256

25 Z 261

Acknowledgments 279

A Note on the Sources 283

Notes 285

Selected Bibliography 315

Index 327