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

Author: David Grann
Year: 2010
Publisher:  Vintage Books
Website: www.davidgrann.com

I must confess, I have a romantic attachment to the idea of exploration. The adventurer in me can't help but think about how wonderful it would be to live in a time where you could set out to explore unknown worlds. I sometimes find myself looking at a beautiful spot whether it be a waterfall, a mountain range or  a river and imagining what it would have been like to stumble across this piece of God's mastery and know that no human had seen it before. That's what drew me to this book. It's about the British explorer Percy Fawcett that made numerous treks to the Amazon searching for what he called the Lost City of Z. His final party consisted of three people, Fawcett, his son and his son's friend. They disappeared in the jungle. David Grann sets out to trace Fawcett's journeys and to try to solve the mystery of Fawcett's disappearance. 

I started reading this book months ago. I set it down 50 pages in and didn't pick it back up until today. I don't know why. I just wasn't in the mood to read it and, finally, today I was. I'm glad I did. It's a riveting story. It vividly brings to life the period of the explorers and their struggles and determination to find something that nobody has found before and write their name in the history books. I also envied David Grann just a little bit because he got to follow in Fawcett's footsteps and "explore" the Amazon himself.