The following may be considered to include spoilers. 

I really wanted to like this book. Appears to be universally loved at large and by people I respect. For me, however,  it quickly became THE LOST CITY OF ZZZZZZZ. As presented, the main character of this adventure saga Percy Fawcett is not particularly interesting. His main assets appear to be his ability to stay healthy in a tropical climate….and that’s about it.  He had little concern for his family or anyone going on his expeditions preferring to seek self-aggrandizement above all else. That would be fine, a lot of historical figures share those traits and worse, if the tale was better told. Part of the problem is the author’s insertion into the story. I wanted to remain immersed in history—not be jerked back to the present because the author is having trouble packing for the jungle. When the book should be building momentum in the second half, suddenly the author is complaining about jungle toilets. There is no momentum in this book at all. Fawcett takes a trip to Brazil. Does some stuff. His contributions largely being expanding the mapping of the continent. This would be cool if I was given a sense of why that was important—how it changed the world. He shrunk the boundaries of the unknown world—cool but just saying that doesn’t really mean anything. Fawcett made multiple trips and I began getting them confused. Or was the book redundant. Yes and yes. 

 

Squinting my reading eyes I began to realize how much of the narrative was based upon sitting room supposition or self-interested voices. Because of this, the topic might have been better served in novel form where suppositions can breed and and raise their young without concern or concealment. Of course the tease of the whole book is a mysterious lost city of gold that Fawcett dubs “Z”. Midway thru the book “Z” is reasonably dismissed as tall stacks of eroded stone that resemble giant columns. Naturally occurring stone mistaken for ancient ruins would seem important. What should reveal Fawcett’s adventures as a fool’s errand is just blown by in the book. It is referenced again when the author flies over the jungle. This answer is disregarded again like the author is walking on train tracks ignoring an oncoming train. Then a lot of effort is put into justifying the author’s trip to Brazil by taking what may have been subtle traces of an ancient city (maybe those rises and falls in the landscape are ancient canals or maybe not) and practically demanding this is the site of “Z”. 

 

This is all bad enough, but the whole book turns out to be a swindle. Very late it’s mentioned that Percy Fawcett may have had mental health issues. WHAT? The focus of the book purports to be about his passion to explore—and the guy may have been crazy—and you don’t mention it until parenthetically near the end. This should have been a central focus of the book. Was he born crazy or crazy from the heat? Did it take madness to make him an explorer? Are all explorers mad to some degree? Where is the line between madness and driven determination? Disappointment must be part of the landscape for an explorer—I shouldn’t have to face it as a reader.