The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon Paperback – Illustrated, January 26, 2010

I found this book interesting in many ways. It was easy to read since it touched many subjects that are familiar to me. The book covers historic facts of the Victorian age and its influence in the world but specially South America and the countries of Bolivia and Brazil whose Amazonian region was and is difficult to explore or study. It is well balanced since the book covers many areas that help understand different points of view of previous times compared to present times. I found answers to questions that come up as you read this book. For instance, to refer to the tribes that populate the Amazonian forests as savages, made me question who is anyone to judge, specially after the atrocities of WWI, described in the book as well as all the inhuman spectacle of WW2. Also, it explains what was happening in the areas related to the fields he got to be involved in like archeology and the discovery of Machu Pichu which may have influenced him.Fawcett’s motivations could have been banal if they were glory or becoming famous but he showed an ethical position not usual in his time which was to approach the indigenous people in a non violent way, trying not to use arms and ordering to drop arms even if danger was felt. He would raise his hands and confront the Indians which gave him good results since he got to be treated as a sort of friend. This respectful behavior, considering the times, was something positive to take in account when trying to define Fawcett's personality which could show his humanity, something to learn from him. Now, consider that Indiana Jones is partly based in the real life of Percy Fawcett and P.F. is one of the characters of one of his movies; however, Indiana Jones had no problem in shooting for entertainment.Having lived in Bolivia and having done some exploration myself I may have a different take to this adventure. To start, one of Fawcett's motivation was as normal as to answer why people climb mountains, the answer is,” because it's there". I have done hiking going from La Paz at 12000 ft. above sea level to about 15000 ft. and then down to the tropics of Yungas which is the start of the Amazonian jungle all along an Inca road which was partly well preserved considering hundreds of years of use. After getting familiar with this subtropical region, it happened that I read The mines of King Salomon and this book, cited in Grann's book as well, inspired me to go farther. My plan was to go to an uncharted area in the forest called Madidi, which is a national park now. My motivation was just to see what no one else has seen. I was able to enlist two university friends who seemed interested but who back down at the last minute. Next year I tried again but I had a sudden back ache problem. Going back to the book, Fawcett's intentions may have been to attain fame by finding not El Dorado but something like Machu Pichu which was “found” in 1911. He visited Cusco and Tiahuanacu and was able to marvel at the achievements of these civilizations. But destiny put him in the Bolivian jungle with the aid of the British government, it wasn't something that he was looking for but that opened his eyes and his innate explorer spirit.Before I even finished reading this book I was compelled to read about the original source, Percy Fawcett's own words, compiled in a book “Lost trail, lost cities” by Brian Fawcett, his son. By reading it, I found out that in his first trip he was hired by the Bolivian government, P. Fawcett does not mention Brazil in the first expedition which was actually work. Now, there are historical details that are not clear. The border problem between Bolivia and Brazil was already established in 1903 after a short war between these two countries and the result was the annexation of the Acre, an area of 190,000 square Kilometers (75,000 sq mls), more than ¾ the size of UK. By the way, something that this book could have in next edition is a better map, the map of Bolivia is not clear.There are details in the Fawcett's book that could have been part of Grann's book or even the movie, like the moment when, after departing La Paz, one of many mules P.F. had, runs away and that was the mule that had the $£1000 in gold he received as part of the payment from the Bolivian government, an interesting historical detail, a “jingling treasure” in the saddle bags. However, Fawcett explains that the mule was brought back by local people who he rewarded. P .F. describes foreigners by name but there is no mention of Bolivian dignitaries with the exception of the president of Bolivia who was taking matters with his own hands and who knew these lands very well. The region next to the Brazilian border bears his name, Pando.“All who have lived in these lands and learned to know them fell captive to their irresistible charm”, Fawcett writes as part of his reflexions. Is this one of the motives he kept coming back?

The saga of Col. Percy Fawcett's disappearance into the Amazon jungle in 1925 is mentioned in many of the books I've read on alternate versions of history. In one book, Col Fawcett finds an entrance to the "inner earth" where a race of superbeing live, and he is unable to get back home. In others, Fawcett finds the fabulous jungle city and joins its inhabitants, deciding this advanced civilization should remain unknown to the rest of the world. I had developed a curiosity about Col. Fawcett, along with wondering if there really could be remnants of an advanced civilization in the huge area of Amazon rain forest. I picked up this book to find out if author David Grann had discovered Col Fawcett's fate.I was unaware of how many Fawcett fanatics were out there, people who have actually gone in search of him or some indication of what happened to him, perhaps hoping that they too might enter the fabulous jungle city. The author of The Lost City of Z became one of those fanatics, finding himself totally caught up in the adventure of trying to find out what happened to Fawcett. This book is a combination of the story of Fawcett and his family (especially long-suffering wife Nina, and son Jack, who, along with his friend Raleigh Rimell, went with Fawcett on that final ill-fated trip) and the author's own trip to the Brazilian interior following in Fawcett's footsteps.It turns out that quite a lot is known about Fawcett's last journey in search of the lost city he called "Z." The Royal Geographical Society (RGS), based in London, had sponsored Fawcett's trips and this venerable society still exists, along with records of Fawcett's journeys on their behalf. The RGS mission was to map the unknown parts of the world, and, to that end, they trained and sent "explorers" into unmapped areas. This was an era before the academic disciplines of Anthropology and Archeology had made much headway. Many explorers were wealthy men who used their fortunes to go on adventures that also added to knowledge of the earth: its land masses, plant life, animals, and primitive peoples. Fawcett, alas for him, was not wealthy due to the fact that his parents had squandered the family fortune. He needed funding from the RGS to continue pursuing his theories about the Amazon jungle.Fawcett, inspired by the stories of earlier Amazon explorers who reported seeing cities and large populations, believed that there was a fabulous stone city somewhere in the jungle that was part of a civilization that had once thrived, but was now mostly gone. Unlike some explorers who treated the natives as enemies, Fawcett felt that the idigenous tribes could be of great help and tried to befriend them in order to get information. He felt he could make better contact with them if he traveled light, without a large retinue of guides and pack animals. On his final fateful journey, he took only his son, and his son's friend Raleigh. None of them returned from this expedition.So did the author find the answer to Fawcett's disappearance? Well, sort of. With far better equipment than Fawcett had, the author did find and speak to natives who had stories, objects, or memories of Fawcett. The preponderance of evidence showed that Fawcett had traveled, against the advice of the nearest tribe, into an area inhabited by a hostile tribe and he and his companions were most likely killed. But no one could actually confirm this.This book takes you into the world of Percy Fawcett and his obsession with the lost city, but it is not until the last chapter that we learn that the Colonel's vision of a great civilization in the jungle may not be far from the truth. This brings me to my biggest complaint about the book. Why did the author take such a long route to the punch line (yes, there was an advanced civilization), then tell us so little about what is now known about cities and civilizations in the jungle?He does give us the main objections of "experts" on why a large, thriving civilization could not exist. First, people said the natives were not intelligent enough to have created a civilization. When times changed and there was acknowledgement that it was not just Englishmen who could be civilized, objection number two appeared: the environment was too harsh to support a large population in any comfort. In fact, early explorers had an incredibly difficult time finding food and dealing with the bugs, the incessant rain and swamp, and the raging rivers, However, Fawcett had discovered that the tribes he contacted had plenty of food and seemed to manage just fine.Actually, if you do some research, you'll learn that within the Amazon jungle is an area of man-made fertile land called the "terra preta." It was created by an unknown process in the past and has remained very fertile to this day, suitable for growing large crops. And there is evidence that the population was once very much larger than today and a system of roads joined numerous villages. There is so much more to this story left to be told.I recommend another two books. Explorers of the Amazon by Anthony Smith tells about the earliest Western visitors to the Amazon, including the stories about early explorers seeing cities and roads. I also enjoyed The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage, the story of John Franklin and his obsession with finding a northwest passage through the Arctic Ocean in the 1800s. In the cases of Fawcett and Franklin, the wife of each devoted the rest of her life to finding the truth of what happened to her husband. Being the wife, son or daughter of an obsessed adventurer was a tough and lonely life. The explorers themselves dealt with a constant danger of death. Reading about these explorations makes me intensely grateful that I don't have to deal with the terrible hardships these men suffered in trying to prove their theories and bring back knowledge of places unknown. For Percy Fawcett - and many others - the final journey into the unknown was a one-way trip.