David Grann's The Lost City of Z was widely praised, and I can certainly see why -- Grann keeps the narrative moving, while skipping between his experiences, and those of Colonel Percy Fawcett, one of the final figures of the Age of Exploration, who disappeared somewhere in the Amazonian jungle looking for the remnants of an ancient civilization. (Or not so ancient, a contemporary of the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztecs.)Probably the best point of the book was how interweaving Fawcett's and Grann's story allowed Fawcett to slowly come into the foreground; in the beginning, he looks like a quietly competent man, the last of the Victorian era explorers. By the end, he seems like a madman on a spiritual, rather than a scientific, quest. The weakest point was that the long winding up was unable to produce a satisfying conclusion -- Grann spends the entire book working up to his Amazon trip, and then nearly immediately comes to a conclusion. While he's able to tie this in with the end of Fawcett's story, it feels rushed, pat, and not fleshed out. (Of course, given that Fawcett disappeared ~80 years before Grann began the project, in a jungle, Grann was unlikely to find anything other than he did, which is old Indian legends).
Overall, this is a fun pop-archaeology/anthropology/history book, with an interesting hook.
