Reviews and Praise
Filter reviews only for: The Devil and Sherlock Holmes The Lost City of Z
“What a story New Yorker writer David Grann tells in “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.” The beauty is that as incredible as it is, it’s true. One of the small joys is how Grann, a middle-aged writer who has no sense of direction and takes the elevator to his second-floor apartment in New York City, intersperses the tale of his trek deep into the Amazon in pursuit of his long-vanished subject. It would seem a case of the clueless in search of clues, but Grann is so grounded in the life of intrepid explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925, that even when you question the wisdom of the writer wading alone in water to his waist hoisting a 40-pound box and his laptop, you know you’re in good hands.”
— The Daily News
“A spellbinding tale that produces fresh surprises around each turn. ... It’s an amazing story.”
“A stirring tale of lost civilizations, avarice, madness and everything else that makes exploration so much fun … marked by satisfyingly unexpected twists, turns and plenty of dark portents.”
— Kirkus Reviews on The Lost City of Z
“Ridiculously entertaining ... The Lost City of Z thrills the heart and mind.”
“Grann, along with many before him, became utterly obsessed by the story, and, before long, kissed his wife and son goodbye to feed his obsession. What follows is an astonishing discovery to conclude this epic tale of adventure, obsession and death.”
“It sounds cliched to describe The Lost City of Z as a cracking read, but it is. It’s also a story of a magnificent obsession. Grann’s greatest achievement, however, is in capturing something of the essence of the Amazon, and the brooding menace that lurks within the ‘green hell.’”
— Wanderlust Magazine
“The Lost City of Z is meticulously researched, riveting and horrifying, guided by a core mystery that seems unimaginable and an author driven into the depths of the jungle by his daring to imagine it.”
— Philadelphia City Paper
“David Grann’s LOST CITY OF Z is a deeply satisfying revelation—a look into the life and times of one of the last great territorial explorers, P. H. Fawcett, and his search for a lost city in the Amazon. I mean, what could be better—obsession, mystery, deadly insects, shrunken heads, suppurating wounds, hostile tribesmen—all for us to savor in our homes, safely before the fire.”
— Erik Larson, author of Thunderstruck, Devil in the White City and Isaac’s Storm on The Lost City of Z
“Few things are better than experiencing a horrendous adventure from the comfort of your own armchair. Hordes of mosquitoes, poison-arrow attacks, bizarre and fatal diseases, spies in starched collars, hidden outposts of Atlantis — what’s not to like? The Lost City of Z is like a wonderful 19th-century tale of exotic danger — except that David Grann’s book is also a sensitively written biographical detective story, a vest pocket history of exploration, and a guide to the new archaeological research that is exploding our preconceptions of the Amazon and its peoples.”
— Charles Mann, author of 1491 on The Lost City of Z
“With this riveting work, David Grann emerges on our national landscape as a major new talent. His superb writing style, his skills as a reporter, his masterful use of historical and scientific documents, and his stunning storytelling ability are on full display here, producing an endlessly absorbing tale about a magical subject that captivates from start to finish. This is a terrific book.”
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals on The Lost City of Z
“The Amazon has had many chroniclers but few who can match David Grann’s grasp of history, science, and especially narrative. Shifting seamlessly between the past and present, The Lost City of Z is a riveting, totally absorbing real-life adventure story.”
— Nathaniel Philbrick, New York Times bestselling author of Mayflower on The Lost City of Z
“A fantastic story of courage, obsession, and mystery, The Lost City of Z is gripping from beginning to end. In the pantheon of classic exploration tales, this stands out as one of the best.”
— Candice Millard, author The River of Doubt on The Lost City of Z
“Though it reads like a novel, this is a wonderfully researched true story about an intrepid adventurer, a colorful cast, and an obsession that grips both him and the author.”
— Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein on The Lost City of Z
“David Grann takes the reader on an extraordinary journey that snakes through expeditionary archives and ends deep in the Amazonian forest. The Lost City of Z is a gripping tale of a lost world and of the magnificent obsession of those who have sought it.”
— Caroline Alexander, author of The Bounty and The Endurance on The Lost City of Z
“What a wild and adventurous life! In the deft storytelling hands of David Grann, explorer Percy Fawcett emerges as one of the most ambitious, colorful, just plain intrepid figures ever to set foot in the New World. Part Indiana Jones, part Livingstone, and part Kit Carson, Fawcett has found his perfect biographer in Grann, who has gamely endured every conceivable Amazonian hardship to piece together the story of this British swashbuckler and his crazed search for a vanished civilization.”
— Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers on The Lost City of Z
“It’s a cracking book, brave and funny, full of snakes and spears and spies, outlandish diseases, hype and heroics.”
For all the wild adventure, the great scenes and the careful research on display here, what really stands out, by virtue of being practically invisible, is Grann’s writing skill, on every level. His prose is rich and immediate. His portraits of Fawcett’s life, from his birth in Victorian aristocracy to his life in Ceylon to his repeated attempts to penetrate the Amazonian jungle, are more gripping than the fiction his life inspired. That includes Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost World,’ setting the bar pretty damn high, but Grann leapfrogs fiction with documented reality and clean but descriptive prose. ...
‘The Lost City of Z’ is one of the most intricately plotted and exciting works of nonfiction you’re going to find anywhere. Jetting back and forth between past and present, Grann keeps the suspense high but never sacrifices clarity or cheats the reader. ‘The Lost City of Z’ is an intricate, exciting work that keeps the pages turning as compulsively as any fictional thriller. Grann’s inter-cutting between his story and Fawcett’s is in itself a superb literary construct that will deserve attention long after the mysteries in the book are revealed.
And yes, they are revealed in a manner both satisfying and believable. That’s not a given since, as Grann explains, the concept of a civilization in the jungle goes against the grain of prevailing theories. But against the odds, Grann manages to unearth and present to readers a stunning vision of exhaustion and exploration. From a trunk in an attic to a remote village in the Amazonian jungle, Grann’s story is by turns terrifying, spectacular and unique. If you’ve ever thought that all the adventures on this earth were over, that “They don’t write ‘em like that anymore,” then ‘The Lost City of Z’ will open up the world, your world, your vision — and fill it with authentic wonder.
— Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column
“In his first book, The Lost City of Z, the excellent New Yorker writer David Grann ... solves the mystery that kept Fawcett up at night. It’s a thrilling story, and Grann — who received the close cooperation of Fawcett’s relatives and had unprecedented access to the explorer’s maps and journals — tells it beautifully.”
“Moving ... Enthralling ... What is most striking about The Lost City of Z is the portrait that Grann gives of a vanished world. Adventurers of a century ago who probed polar ice caps and the Amazon rain forest did so without the aid of GPS systems and snakebite kits, without global satellite communications, lip balms, or portable hot-water showers. Thrust into the most hostile environments imaginable, utterly cut off form the outside world, they were forced to survive on their wits and their courage. The alternative was death. it is a world that Grann brings back wondrously to life.”
— New York Review of Book
“An absorbing book ... This is a wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration.”
— The London Sunday Times
“An AMAZING book ... Percy Fawcett was the nonfiction ‘Indiana Jones.’”
— The Bulletin
“A vivid picture of the final days of trail-blazing, Earth-bound grand exploration, before airplanes and radios began stripping the mystery from the unknown parts of the world.”
— The Virginian-Pilot
“A biography ... crossed with a whodunit worthy of Christie.”
— Canberra Times
“A thrilling, meticulously researched yarn, painting a clear picture of a land where men were felled by yellow fever, disease-spreading insects, skin-eating maggots, snakes, and poisoned spears ... Grann’s enthusiasm for his topic is palpable, and it’s hard not to feel enthralled with his telling of Fawcett’s adventures.”
— ABC Radio in Australia
“In this marvellous book, David Grann - a staff writer on The New Yorker - recreates Fawcett’s story and describes how he became captivated by the Fawcett legend, following the documentary trail and emptying the shelves of his local adventure sports store to work out what really happened. To reveal whether ‘Z’’ existed would spoil the surprise: suffice to say that this is an engrossing book, whose protagonist could outmarch Lara Croft and out-think Indiana Jones. The turn-of-the-century world, and the Royal Geographical Society’s efforts to push back the frontiers of cartographic ignorance, are beautifully described. It’s almost enough to make you reach for a backpack.”
— Daily Telegraph