The Lost City of Z

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Growing up I thought I wanted to be an archaeologist. Now that I’m a ripe 32, I realize what I really wanted to be was an adventurer–someone who dug deep into the dark and emerged with treasures unseen for millennia.

After reading The Lost City of Z I am very, very okay with my life choices. I have no desire to feel insects crawling underneath my skin after laying eggs in open wounds. I have no desire to face hallucinations brought on by deep jungle fever. This book is not for the faint of stomach. You feel, smell, and scratch every single horror the Amazon can bear against those who assail it.

Outside of explicit details of all the ways the Amazon can kill you, this tale truly is a treasure. Most striking is how Grann takes you into the modern Amazon and uses his frame story of Percy Fawcett’s adventures to explore exploitation, environmental damage, and social responsibility. He could have focused solely on Fawcett and this would have still been a best seller. Instead, he leaned into his journalistic instincts and created something much, much more impactful.

This one would rate higher if Grann did not rely so often on the “reality TV cut”, teasing something serious that ends up being innocuous before cutting to commercial. The cuts lowered the impact for later in the book when actual important discoveries are being presented in the same way.

Little separates this year’s top five, and The Lost City of Z scored well across the board. If you’re looking to disappear into a real life adventure story, this one is for you.

Final Grade (all out of ten):

Plot: 8

Characters: 8

Conflict: 8

Theme: 8

Setting: 9

Prose: 8

Tone: 9

Quality: 8

Impact: 8

Enjoyment: 8

Overall: 82/100

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A/N:

Over the next ten days I’ll be releasing full reviews of my top ten books of 2025. From there, I plan on publishing a weekly book review. I’m hoping this is a way to keep me reading regularly and academically.

A quick note on my grading philosophy which I formed listening to a few movie critics. I believe that a 7 in any of the categories above constitutes “Good”. Anything above that is something that is above and beyond in any one particular category. I believe this creates a more nuanced evaluation of any Story. Very, very rarely do I give scores above 90 (8 since I started grading books back in 2022). Consider anything a 70 or above the equivalent of 5 stars. You may note that some entries are tied. The tiebreakers are the higher individual score in Enjoyment, then Impact, then Quality, then back up to Plot and descending from there.

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