In 1925 Percy Fawcett, the most experienced explorer in the Amazon, walked into the Mato Grosso with his son and his son’s friend looking for a city he called Z, and none of them came out. Something like a hundred people have died or disappeared going after them since. Grann tells Fawcett’s story — the Royal Geographical Society, decades of surveying, the obsession — and then, being a New Yorker writer with no relevant skills, goes to the Xingu himself to follow the trail. What he finds is the archaeology that has since shown large, complex settlements really were out there, which means Fawcett was wrong about almost everything except the main thing.
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon