The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon Theme of Exploration

With today's technology, you can explore the world from the comfort of your own couch. Rise of the Tomb Raider sticks you in Siberia. Doom takes you all the way to Mars. And Uncharted leads you on a journey eerily similar to that of Col. Fawcett.

The Lost City of Z takes place at a time when the Amazon jungle was literally uncharted. Fawcett is charting it, and he is so excited to fill in the blanks that he concocts a fabulous city beyond our wildest imagination. Okay, we're exaggerating. He imagined it, so it's within imagination, but that doesn't make it real.

Questions About Exploration

  1. What is Fawcett's motivation for exploring the Amazon before he develops the theory of Z?
  2. What are Fawcett's contributions? How would the world be different if Fawcett did not go on his expeditions?
  3. Does David Grann discover anything unexpected during his exploration of the Amazon? What does he find that he didn't expect to find?
  4. Do the the explorers in the book have anything specific in common?