Summary and Analysis of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon: Based on the Book by David Grann
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This short summary and analysis of The Lost City of Z includes:
- Historical context
- Chapter-by-chapter overviews
- Profiles of the main characters
- Detailed timeline of key events
- Important quotes
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- Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
Nearly a century after Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared while on a quest to discover the mythical “Lost City of Z” in South America, New York Times–bestselling author David Grann set out to explore—first-hand—the terrain and history that have fascinated generations of explorers and scientists.
Fawcett’s wild tales of flora, fauna, and indigeous peoples captivated the West, and his disappearance sent shockwaves around the world that continue to resonate today.
David Grann’s book weaves the exciting stories of Colonel Percy Fawcett and his mysterious demise with an account of his own exploration of the Amazon.
The Lost City of Z is now a major motion picture starring Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Charlie Hunnam, and Sienna Miller.
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
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Summary and Analysis of The Lost City of Z - Worth Books
Contents
Context
Overview
Summary
Timeline
Cast of Characters
Direct Quotes and Analysis
Trivia
What’s That Word?
Critical Response
About David Grann
For Your Information
Bibliography
Copyright
Context
In January of 1925, the British explorer Percy Fawcett set off to discover a legendary lost city in the Amazon rainforest, and was never seen again. At the time, a number of forces increased the fervor surrounding his persona and disappearance. Society was shifting from the notoriously stuffy Victorian era to a newer, more curious age. The scientific revolution shook the foundations of people’s beliefs and, counterintuitively, led to extensive interest in occult and psychic forces, as well as the belief that unknown regions like the Amazon might be bastions of untold mystical discovery. Exploration ran practically rampant, with English explorers like Sir Richard Francis Burton infiltrating previously inaccessible cities such as Mecca, or Richard Speke hunting for the source of the Nile, not to mention explorers’ numerous expeditions into the Antarctic.
In places like South America, the clash of the old world and the new was felt most acutely. Prospectors seeking rubber had decimated the Amazon and set up systems of indentured servitude at best and genocide and slavery at worst. Construction on the Panama Canal began in 1881 and led to more than 20,000 deaths due to disease in less than thirty years.
The inhabitants of these occupied lands were not generally seen as human in the West. With the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, Europeans began to think of indigenous American peoples as a subspecies to be studied, gawked at, and sometimes most destructively, to be civilized
according to Western customs and etiquette.
Since 2005, when David Grann was working on The Lost City of Z, an account of his hunt for Fawcett and Z, local governments have shifted their attitude towards indigenous tribes. They work to preserve these ancient cultures rather than to assimilate them. From an ecological standpoint, the riches of the Amazon are still being mined, and the dangers are still great, but now that threat comes from logging companies rather than rubber barons.
Ultimately, Grann’s account carries an implicit message relevant to his modern audience’s concern about climate change and globalization: Places like the Amazon represent humanity’s relationship with nature as well as its relationship with itself. If we destroy the forest and the cultures within it, we lose not only enormous ecological treasures, but cultural and historical treasures as well.
Overview
In 1925, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, along with his son Jack and Jack’s friend Raleigh, embark on an expedition into the Amazon jungle to find the mystical city, which Fawcett has theorized must exist, and which he has nicknamed Z.
The three men vanish, never to be seen again.
In 2005, journalist David Grann becomes obsessed with finding out the truth of Fawcett’s fate and