"In the Amazon, Fawcett marveled, the animal kingdom 'is against man as it is nowhere else in the world.'"
David Grann is a master at unearthing historical figures and contexts, and he's at his best in "The Lost City of Z."
I was familiar with Grann's work from reading "Killers of the Flower Moon" last year, so I was prepared for the density that his style of writing can bring. While this occasionally makes relative dates difficult to follow, the overall effect is well worth the effort.
Painstakingly researched and relying at least somewhat on first-hand exploration, "The Lost City of Z" captures the obsession surrounding the search for the lost city of gold. This undertaking has claimed countless lives, and Grann's depiction of perhaps the most famous pursuer, Percy Fawcett, is full of intense, terrifying, and unfathomable accounts.
"No Olympic games contender was ever trained down to a finer edge than these three reserved, matter-of-fact Englishmen, whose pathway to a forgotten world is best by arrows, pestilence and wild beasts."
This tale works best when Grann puts us in the shoes of Fawcett, his son, and his son's friend as they put forth their most intensive quest yet. The questions of where they ended up, what happened to them, and what they may have found hang over the pages like rain-forest humidity.
"The Lost City of Z" is a quick, engrossing read that reels you in and places you in the middle of harrowing incidents and lore -- and in the middle of Fawcett's mind as his grasp on sanity slowly loses permanence.
"Those whom the Gods intend to destroy they first make mad!"
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