Brazilian Adventure

In 1932, a young Times journalist answered an advertisement in the paper inviting volunteers for "an exploring and sporting expedition" into the Brazilian interior. The mission was to find Colonel Percy Fawcett, the explorer who had vanished in 1925 searching for a lost city deep in the Amazon. The expedition, as it turned out, was a shambles. But Peter Fleming, brother of Ian, came home with one of the great travel books of the twentieth century: a self-deprecating, dryly funny account of jungle, river and the strange business of trying to be an explorer.