What is Reddit's opinion of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon?

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Not sure how interested you are in non-fiction, but I highly recommend The Lost City of Z by David Grann. It's the true story of the explorer Percy Fawcett, who set out in 1925 in search of a lost civilization in the Amazon. I won't give away too much more than that, but it's an outstanding book. And while it is non-fiction, it definitely reads like a novel.

Yes, the book is called "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" by David Grann. Below is a link to it on Amazon. This is one of the best books I've ever read.

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-City-Deadly-Obsession-Amazon/dp/1400078458

Everyone should read the book about this when they can. It's an extremely enjoyable and sometimes gritty true account of a group of men who went into the jungle in search of a lost city and simply vanished from the face of the earth.

They based their hunt on a rare Portuguese document written by a friar in Brazil after one surviving man from an expedition emerged from the jungle in 1753 after 10 years and gave his account as to what they saw. It's a real document known as Manuscript 512 and it's in the Brazilian state archives.

I'm a sucker for ruins. A couple other ideas:

Part of a civilization in decline secured some of their sacred relics but didn't have the resources to continue to occupy the city containing a major temple. They leave with every intention of coming back at the next high holy day but... don't. Maybe they were killed by disease or starvation, maybe the intervening country became occupied and they didn't dare risk a journey that could lead an enemy to a sacred site.

Placing ruins in difficult and inhospitable places also helps. Look at the jungle ruins we are still finding to this day only thanks to new technology. A place can be carved out and livable and then quickly disappear back into "nature" in our own world. Adding the chance of magic / divine intervention in the mix makes this even more likely. The book The Lost City of Z really cemented this idea for me when I read it a couple years ago. I highly recommend it!

Sometimes the ruins are simply occupied - an army or some creatures moved in and chased off the original inhabitants. They either don't know about or don't care about what the players find valuable and thus the PCs have to sneak in and get it.

Sometimes nature just surprises you, like what happened over time in Dunwich.

Anyway, I hope at least some of that helps!

Have you tried The Lost City of Z?

I originally encountered it in the book The City of Z, which is about a modern writer retracing the steps of the famed Fawcett and attempting resolve what exactly happened to him on his last expedition. In the end he starts discussing how Fawcett was doomed to never find the legendary city he searched for, because he was searching for the hallmarks of a European society. It's an interesting read, and well worth it if you like adventure style things(this writing literally retraveled Fawcett's expedition paths and attempted to discover from the natives what may have happened. One tribe even produced a body, but it was determined to just be a native's bones.). Many of the sites both Fawcett and the author visited are now thought to be places where major amazon cities once stood.

After that I started seeing it in a lot more places. I think I was blind to it before.

This wiki page is about terra preta; an artificial dirt created to farm in the amazon. It's not directly related to canals, but still interesting.

Agroforestry may have been used in conjunction with terra preta, and canal systems.

The City of Z(Legend not book)

Kuhikugu Archaeological site that suggests the natives had greater geoscaping capabilities then we initially assumed.

There are also dozens of news articles that comment on it, but the details tend to either fall behind a pay wall or EDU access.

Not fantasy or sci-fi, but great tale of exploration!

If you're looking for similar jungle adventure/endurance books I would highly recommend:

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

The River oF Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

Both books are extremely readable and cover similar true stories of journeys into the jungle in search of something undiscovered.

The Lost City of Z is an amazing book! One of my favourites.

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Lost-City-Deadly-Obsession/dp/1400078458

You find the Lost City of Z yet?

-David Grann's The Lost City of Z and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes

-Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia

-Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy

I wouldn't say they're out of control, but it's crazy that ebooks sometimes cost more than the physical book. I just looked up two books the other day for a friend, Lost City of Z and Don't Sleep There Are Snakes, and both of them are cheaper if you buy the paperback and the hardback version of the second one is cheaper than the Kindle version. I emailed the publishing company a quick email to let them know how ridiculous it was and explained to them that I decided to purchase a used copy of the book. I also told them that this only makes people wanted to download books from torrent sites even more. Not that I'll make a difference by emailing them, but hopefully someone reads it and gets what I'm saying.

Lost City of Z is a great read on the subject. I could not put it down once I started.

Hello and Welcome back. So sorry that you're going throw bad times. let me know if i can do anything.

I have this book for 7.25 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400078458/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=SOZXP7H39ER4&coliid=I1E2WKP7ZBEQ98