I read The Lost City of Z cover to cover. I thought it was great. A good biography distills what makes a singular person so singular, and for Fawcett I got a very strong sense of what that was--an unusually strong constitution; a slight antisocial tendency; reverence for nature and "natural" (conveyed too in his love for "Indians" and their culture).
The portion near the end of the book where the author catalogues the graveyard of people chasing after Fawcett and meeting doom was very shocking. The author's journey was less exciting, although the way the book pivoted naturally from biography to ethnographic/anthropological study was great.
I had already been familiar with some of the advanced development in the Central/South American area from a nonfiction book I read around 10-15 years ago called the "Ancient Sun Kingdoms of the Americas".
I have only two quibbles:
- When the author introduces the idea that Fawcett may have become a quack occultist, it is dealt with very very quickly and in no detail at all. Given the exhaustiveness of his research, he was clearly equipped to deal with this subject in greater detail. If the remainder of the author's biography omitted this info intentionally in order to give a more inspirational portrait of Fawcett, that would be doing a disservice to the truth.
- The index/notes are so long that I was only 70% of the way through according to my Kindle when the book ended, so I got caught off guard. The book's ending is by necessity kind of abrupt, but the ending combined with there being no indication I was near the end was unfortunate.
Thanks for the recommendation all that time ago.
