Percy Fawcett, one of the last of the iconic British explorers, ca. 1920, khaki get-up, pith helmet, and scraggly beard spends most of a lifetime searching for a purported grand, abandoned city in the Amazon until he finally gets lost never to be heard from again. The author searches for Fawcett and all the other explorers who have searched for Fawcett, but never quite builds much in the way of suspense. Maybe it is because I have spent time in the Amazon, but I was left with an overwhelming sense of despair for the obvious loss of one of the world’s last great ecosystems and the decimation of the natives who live there, a sideline in Grann’s account.