Books » South America Travel Books

Pages: 24, Library Binding, PowerKids Press

In his famously ironic style, Peter Fleming writes in the introduction to Brazilian Adventure, "Beyond the completion of a 3,000-mile journey, mostly under amusing conditions, through a little-known part of the world, and the discovery of one new tributary to a tributary to a tributary of the Amazon, nothing of importance was achieved." Nothing indeed. Fleming, a literary editor, discarded his pen for a pistol in 1932 to engage in the celebrated search for an English adventurer, Colonel P. H. Fawcett, missing in the jungles of central Brazil. With meager supplies, faulty maps, and rival newspapermen hot on their trail, Fleming and his companions marched, fought, and canoed through 3,000 miles of savage country and alligator-ridden rivers toward the uncertain fate of the lost colonel and one of the great adventure stories of all time. Brazilian Adventure tells a story as fresh today as it was when originally published in 1933. Fleming is a master of his form.

"This brilliantly written reconstruction of Sir Walter Raleigh's 1595 South American journey combines painstaking scholarship, vivid travelogue, and an intuitive sensitivity for the many meanings of the El Dorado myth. . . . Nicholl brings this six-week expedition to life. . . . A rare treat for both intellect and imagination."--Kirkus Reviews "Walter Raleigh . . . was one of those Elizabethan all-rounders who still seem staggeringly larger than life. . . . Mr. Nicholl's cogent reconstruction of the journey uses Raleigh's own account, 'The Discoverie of Guiana'--part truth, part advertising, part rhapsody--and much well-found ancillary material."--Anthony Bailey, New York Times "Like The Reckoning, his brilliant account of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, Nicholl's new book might be called an exercise in historical conjuring. The Creature in the Map is an effort not only to analyse but also to call into presence the lived experience of the voyage Raleigh undertook in 1595 to the Orinoco Delta in what is now Venezuela."--Stephen Greenblatt, Times Literary Supplement "Charles Nicholl belongs to an elite company, that of historians who know how to make research into arcane matters and distant times as engrossing as In Cold Blood or All the President's Men."--Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Flying South A Pilot's Inner Journey by Barbara Cushman Rowell Photographs by Barbara and Galen Rowell

Call it love at first flight. Barbara Cushman Rowell was already a powerhouse by anyone's measure, but it wasn't until she tried flying that she found the inner fulfillment and sense of self she'd longed for all her life. As the driving force behind husband Galen Rowell's business success, Barbara's adventures and accomplishments had always been the byproduct of her husband's career. Until, that is, she took off and sailed into a strata all her own. FLYING SOUTH is the hair-raising, reflective, and ultimately inspiring story of

Barbara's trip of a lifetime-a 25,000-mile, 57-leg journey through Latin America and the recesses of her soul, discovering unrealized self-confidence, irrepressible resourcefulness, and vast reserves of emotional and physical strength she never knew she had. And what a journey it was. She recounts landing in the middle of a coup in Panama, narrowly escaping disaster when key flight instruments failed over Peru, flying herself to an oral surgeon after a mouth-smashing rafting accident on the Bio Bio River in Chile, fighting plane-shredding winds over the Andes, and surviving a life-threatening and disorienting tropical storm off the coast of Brazil-all while navigating the pervasive and demoralizing chauvinism of the aviation world. But much more than a harrowing page-turner, Barbara's tale of finding herself through flight inspires us all to go after the experiences we long for, and to live the lives we only wish for.

While planning a cruise on Thalassi, an 83-foot ketch, along the South American coast and around Cape Horn, skipper John Campbell realized that his route would closely follow that taken by Charles Darwin onhis historic journey aboard the Beagle. Thus was born a plan to compare the reality of those same places today with the descriptions and observations made by Darwin over 150 years earlier.

In Patagonia is Bruce Chatwin's exquisite account of his journey through "the uttermost part of the earth," that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome and Charles Darwin formed part of his "survival of the fittest" theory. Chatwin's evocative descriptions, notes on the odd history of the region, and enchanting anecdotes make In Patagonia an exhilarating look at a place that still retains the exotic mystery of a far-off, unseen land. An instant classic upon publication in 1977, In Patagonia remains a masterwork of literature.

Ruiz spent 11 years exploring the villages and botanical landscapes of Peru and Chile. His journals contain detailed, personal observations of about 2000 plants, along with his impressions of the culture and perils of exploration in South America.

All too often, travel writers plunge into seemingly obscure parts of the globe with little knowledge of where they are, whom they are among, or what has happened there in the past. In this trend-breaking anti travel book, Richard Gott describes his own journey through the heart of South America, across the swampland that forms the watershed between the River Plate and the River Amazon. But the story of his expedition takes second place to a brilliant resurrection of the historical events in the area over five hundred years, of the people who have lived there and the visitors who have made the same journey. The land crossed by the Upper Paraguay river once formed the contested frontier in South America between Spanish and Portuguese territory. The Portuguese sent expeditions through it in attempts to reach the Spanish silver mines of the Andes, and the Jesuits (supported by the monarch in Madrid) established strategic hamlets - the famous Indian missions - to stabilize the frontier. But this was not the beginning or end of conflict in the area. Earlier, the Guarani-speaking Indian nations of Paraguay had made violent contact across the swamp with the Quechua-speakers of the Inca empire; later, after the departure of the Spaniards, the nineteenth century witnessed a prolonged period of purposeful extermination of the local peoples. Since the Spanish conquest, the area has seen an endless procession of newcomers pursuing unsuitable and utopian programmes of economic and social development that have inevitably ended in disaster for the local population. Intermingling accounts of his own travels over many years with those Jesuit priests, Spanish conquistadors and Portuguese Mamelukes, together with those of other visitors such as Alcides D'Orbigny, Theodore Roosevelt, and Claude Levi-Strauss, Richard Gott weaves a complex web of narrative that brings to life the almost unknown frontier land of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Both gripping and polemical, Land Without Evil is a significant contribution to our knowledge of South America.

Essential facts on society, business, and politics in Latin America Latin America Profiled covers all the countries of Central and South America, from Mexico to Chile. It profiles critically important economic issues, like Brazil's unprecedented inflation rates under President Juscelino Kubitschek. It further delves into the human rights atrocities that have so plagued the region. Latin America Profiled also details current environmental issues, like the deforestation of the rain forests, and beyond. A wonderful asset when attempting to understand this vast and intricate region.

Using letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts, Ornig has pieced together the gripping story of Theodore Roosevelt's 1913-1914 expedition into the Brazilian equatorial forest that charted the course of the River of Doubt. The 54-year-old former president regarded the trip as his "last chance to be a boy", enjoying the skirmishes with tribesmen and wild animals and the overall adventure of the outing. 48 photos.