There is nothing more disconcerting than someone vanishing into thin air. Unanswered questions abound and the mysteries only tend to grow. The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett and Other Famous Vanishings attempts to provide clarity and background on several individuals’ unexplained departures. While looking for his mythical Lost City of Z, Percy Fawcett vanished. Amelia Earhart did the same while circling the earth on her historic flight. Much like these two historical figures, there has been a slew of cases that have never been solved—noted author Ambrose Bierce, Czar Alexander I, Judge Joseph Force Crater, famed adventurer Richard Halliburton, and others who never managed to return from their adventures. This book examines and documents each case in extensive detail, in an attempt to bring together some of the loose ends. History.com writer Evan Andrews provides a detailed foreword to add some contemporary insight into the accounts of the vanished in The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett and Other Famous Vanishings.
The inspiration for the major motion picture "The Lost City of Z," mystic and legendary British explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett spent 10 years wandering the forests and death-filled rivers of Brazil in search of a fabled lost city. Finally, convinced that he had discovered the location, he set out for the last time toward destination “Z” in 1925, never to be heard from again.This thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett’s ten years of travels in deadly jungles and forests in search of a secret city was compiled by his younger son, Fawcett's companion on his journeys, from manuscripts, letters, and logbooks. An international sensation when it was first published in 1953, Exploration Fawcett was praised by the likes of Graham Greene and Harold Nicolson, and found its way to Ernest Hemingway's bookshelf. Reckless and inspired, full of fortitude and doom, this is a book to rival Heart of Darkness, except that the harrowing accounts described in its pages are completely true. To this day, Colonel Fawcett's disappearance remains a great mystery.
This thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett's ten years of travels in forests and death-filled rivers in search of a secret city was compiled from manuscripts, letters and logbooks by his son. ' The disappearance of Colonel Fawcett in the Matto Grosso remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of today. In 1925 Fawcett was convinced that he had discovered the location of a lost city; he had set out with two companions, one of whom was his eldest son, to destination 'Z', never to be heard of again. His younger son, Brian Fawcett, has compiled this book from letters and records left by his father whose last written words to his wife were: 'You need have no fear of any failure...' Fawcett had tried to find lost cities for ten years: ' That the cities exist I know'. 'a book of great power....should be read by everyone' Daily Telegraph
A chronicle of adventure and discovery in the green, deadly world of the jungle. This extraordinary first-hand account of seven explorations into the heart of the lost world of the Amazon Basin and its mountain ramparts has been made available for publication after more than a quarter of a century’s silence. On his eighth and final expedition, Colonel P. H. Fawcett vanished into the jungle wilderness; to this day his fate is unknown. Before he began his last trip he set down the story of the expeditions he had completed, and his son, Brian Fawcett, here presents it together with a summary of the attempts to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance. Colonel Fawcett was an explorer in the great tradition. He believed that somewhere in the unmapped heart of South America were the ruins of cities whose discovery would confirm many Indian legends that had come down from the days of the conquistadores. Trained in the exacting techniques of exploration-survey, he accepted an opportunity to determine the boundary line between Bolivia and Peru, and in 1906 set out on the first of his expeditions. It and the ones that followed over the next fifteen years have become classics of exploration; Colonel Fawcett combined the discipline of a scientist-engineer with the imaginative daring of a man not afraid to gamble his life on a bold conjecture. In 1921 he set down the narrative of his first seven trips. When he failed to return from the eighth, publication was delayed until it became certain that he would never be able to complete his manuscript. But the reader will find here a wholly engrossing story of a great search written with modesty and great skill, the work of a brave and mature man who possessed both a purpose and a dream. The result is a book which will remain a classic in its field.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction that unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century—the story of the legendary British explorer who ventured into the Amazon jungle in search of a fabled civilization and never returned. “Suspenseful…rollicking.” —The New York Times In 1925, Percy Fawcett went into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle. Look for David Grann’s new book, The Wager, coming in April 2023!
A front row seat to the breaking news, photos and hype surrounding history's most mysterious disappearances. Breaking History books offer a front row seat to history as it broke (like “breaking news”) and give the blow-by-blow of historical discovery—what we learned, when we learned it, who made the discovery, and how. Vanished! is an illustrated tour of history’s most confounding cases of disappearance from Amelia Earhart to Jimmy Hoffa; DB Cooper; Alcatraz escapists Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Algin; Jim Thompson; Judge Joseph Force Crater; and more. Starting with the first 30 days surrounding each incident, and then looking at efforts up to this very day to solve each case, this book covers in photos and text history’s most perplexing vanishings.
*Includes pictures *Includes Fawcett's accounts of his own expeditions *Profiles all the theories surrounding the expedition's disappearance *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "There, I believed, lay the greatest secrets of the past yet preserved in our world of today. I had come to the turn of the road; and for better or worse I chose the forest path." - Percy Fawcett The heroes of each generation reflect the conditions, priorities, and goals of the era in which they reside. In the United States and throughout Europe, the wilderness explorer enjoyed widespread public adulation long before leading sports figures, rock stars, and astronauts of later decades. The ingenuity of the Industrial Revolution gave way to early manned flight, and other breakthroughs in communication, and travel. The British Empire flourished across the globe, incorporating entirely dissimilar cultures into its stylized world view. Within this social canon, the explorer of the Victorian and post-Victorian eras fit perfectly within a nationalistic urge to unveil the secrets of every continent. Even expeditions to both poles became the rage among home-bound vicarious adventurers. Throughout climes featuring thick ice and palm trees alike, the maps of the day featured enormous blank spots where no modern man or woman had ever set foot. Among the largest was, and continues to be, the rain forest of the Amazon, particularly in the vast Mato Grosso region of Brazil. The explorers who stepped forward to cast light on such unknown expanses were often driven by obsessive personalities, and lived in the cracks between hard science and the metaphysical. None were more driven than Colonel Percival (Percy) Harrison Fawcett of the British Army. Fawcett, a veteran of the service, a skilled surveyor, and a tough-minded swashbuckler with a soft spot for psychics and astrologists, captured the public's fascination with his numerous treks into the untraveled jungles of Brazil, which he called "the last great blank space in the world." The first few were simple map-making expeditions, none of them intending to turn the world of archaeology or anthropology upside down. It was, however, Fawcett's later expeditions and his final trek in 1925 that piqued the imaginations of the masses who hung on every outlandish discovery of the age. In the end, he drew more attention to the world of the Amazon by being devoured by it, disappearing without a trace, never to be seen again. The subject of his search was equally riveting, the pursuit of the Lost City of 'Z', somewhere in the Brazilian Amazon. The literary world had already been set ablaze by Tarzan, and other works by Edgar Rice Burroughs and his contemporaries. Readers were still consumed by the stories of Jules Verne, and a collective fantasy viewed the remaining exotic regions of the world as haunted by strange creatures once thought extinct or impossible, indigenous people with no knowledge of the outer world, and even the secretive work of extraterrestrial beings. Shangri-la, El Dorado, and the gold-laden Seven Cities of Cibola served as prime material for the era's imagination. Against that backdrop, the Amazon served as the perfect stage for a generation of literary thrills, and Colonel Fawcett seemed eager to oblige. Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z: The History of the Explorer's Mysterious Disappearance in Search of El Dorado looks at the history of Fawcett's expeditions in search of the reputed lost city, and his controversial disappearance. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z like never before.
**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON, CHARLIE HUNNAM AND SIENNA MILLER** ‘A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure’JOHN GRISHAM The story of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's The Lost World, by the author of the international Number One bestsellers KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE WAGER Fawcett was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers plunged into the jungle, trying to find evidence of Fawcett's party or Z. Some died from disease and starvation; others simply disappeared. In this spellbinding true tale of lethal obsession, David Grann retraces the footsteps of Fawcett and his followers as he unravels one of the greatest mysteries of exploration. ‘A wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration’ Sunday Times ‘Marvellous ... An engrossing book whose protagonist could out-think Indiana Jones’ Daily Telegraph ‘The best story in the world, told perfectly’ Evening Standard ‘A fascinating and brilliant book’ Malcolm Gladwell
True and harrowing accounts of adventurers who never came home Some adventures end in glory, others in obituaries. Instead of receiving laurels and a parade, the adventurers in Vanished! met infamy on a road with no return. Immerse yourself in these gripping accounts of explorers who ventured forth—then simply disappeared. Their fates? We’ll never know. Vanished! draws you into seven page-turning accounts, including one that contains new details of Amelia Earhart’s unsolved disappearance over the vast Pacific. Head to Mexico with Ambrose Bierce, forever lost but not forgotten. Ride the wild Colorado with honeymooners Glen and Bessie Hyde, presumably drowned but whose bodies have never been found. Author Evan Balkan brings these stories to life, and death, in spine-tingling descriptions. Whether murder, sabotage, or just plain bad luck, these are true tales of adventure gone bad, of explorers vanished, forever lost.
In 1932 Peter Fleming, a literary editor, engaged to search for missing English explorer Colonel P.H. Fawcett, lost in tributary of the Amazon, with the hardships of meager supplies, faulty maps, and a pack of rival newspaper-men on their trail.
