For decades explorers and scientists have tried to find evidence of Fawcett's party and of the Lost City of Z. That perpetual urge to find/experience/accomplish/see/do/have the next unattainable thing, to catch the carrot that's always dangling just out of reach?

It is the journey that counts here, and part of that journey is the window Grann offers on a part of the history of exploration, the sort of people who were drawn to it, their reasons, their personalities, the effect of their quests (or obsessions, depending) on their careers, families and on the body of human knowledge. As in KFM, he focuses on the story of one individual, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, and his extensive efforts. the ones who mapped the world, discovered indigenous peoples and didn't plot to murder them all or evangelize them, the ones who climbed, trekked and discovered new places just because they were there.It] has everything to fire the imagination: Romance, nostalgia, bravery, monomania, hardship, adventure, science, tragedy, mystery. We get to see the man take dangerous and almost superhuman treks into the wilderness with an almost blatant disregard for those who come with him. Avoid the animals, the disease, the bugs, injury, and starving to death, and you’re still screwed when hostile natives catch you, eat you and use your skull as their favorite coffee mug. David Grann is an American journalist and author, best known for his narrative non-fiction books Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager.

Over eighteen thousand feet high in the Andes, amid snow and clouds, it emerges through a rocky seam--a trickle of crystal water. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his twenty-one-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilization – which he dubbed "Z" – existed. Along with Antarctica, it remained beyond the reach of all but a handful of adventurers, of whom Fawcett was the most celebrated.For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado.

There was one description that made me shiver: ”Espundia, an illness with even more frightening symptoms. I also respect those who have set out to explore the jungle — many of whom have died or disappeared. It begins as barely a rivulet, this, the mightiest river in the world, mightier than the Nile and the Ganges, mightier than the Mississippi and all the rivers in China. The article documents how Grann, working from Fawcett's long-lost diaries, reconstructed the explorer's last journey, including visiting members of the Kalapalo tribe in the Xingu Indigenous Park region of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Grann brings the exploratory culture of the early 1900s to life through tales of warm weather, mysterious jungle, and some truly gnarly infectious diseases.

Rumors of a lost civilization and clues to its general location was what was driving him, not unlike the quest since the time of the Conquistadors for a gold rich El Dorado. It is hard to consider that there can be a spoiler to a journalistic memoir, but there is a surprise bit of archaeology at the end.

Grann's descriptions of the jungle's deprivations felt to me like watching a David Attenborough nature program in Feel-o-vision. A military man with an athlete's physique and a cast iron constitution, Fawcett made the perfect explorer. B. Cooper as tales unravel of the many minds and/or lives lost in attempts to solve the mystery of a missing man. A moment later, he pointed to a fleet of diesel-belching trucks heading in the opposite direction, carrying sixty-foot logs.I listened to this one on audio and the nattation was excellent but as always with audio I cant help wondering if the hard copy had photos and maps which I would have missed out on in the audio.