Reviews and Praise
Filter reviews only for: The Devil and Sherlock Holmes The Lost City of Z
“The truth is always stranger than fiction, even when it comes to murder mysteries. That’s the take-home lesson of New Yorker writer David Grann’s latest collection, which brings together 12 stories of real-life mysteries, each one stranger and more gripping than the last.”
— The Daily Beast on The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
“In The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, these straightforward tales grip you as unrelentingly as the suckered appendages of the giant squid Grann attempts to track down in ‘‘The Squid Hunter.’’ You might feel that some of the pieces skirt credibility, but remember, as Holmes himself once said, ‘‘Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.’”
— Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly on The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
“The sign of a lasting work of nonfiction is that it’s still a gripping read years after its original publication has been consigned to the recycling bin. These pieces, without exception, meet that test.”
— Nancy Klingener, The Miami Herald on The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
“Grann’s new book is ‘The Devil and Sherlock Holmes,’ a collection of — well, I want to call them short stories, or novellas, because they read like fiction, even though they are all non-fiction.”
— Bookotron on The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
“The Lost City of Z is at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd. Mr. Grann treats us to a harrowing reconstruction of Fawcett’s forays into the Amazonian jungle, as well as an evocative rendering of the vanished age of exploration. ... Suspenseful … Rollicking ... Fascinating ... It reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage, and it seems almost surely destined for a secure perch on the best-seller lists.”
— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times on The Lost City of Z
“Outstanding ... A powerful narrative, stiff lipped and Victorian at the center, trippy at the edges, as if one of those stern men of Conrad had found himself trapped in a novel by Garcia Marquez ... A kind of magical nonfiction ... Terrifically entertaining.”
— The New York Times Sunday Book Review on The Lost City of Z
“The Lost City of Z, by New Yorker writer David Grann, recounts Fawcett’s expeditions with all the pace of a white-knuckle adventure story. The book is a model of suspense and concision. By the end, Grann wins us over with his own hard-won experience. He has geared up, abandoned his family and climbed into the vortex himself—stung by his subject’s obsession. But Grann differs from Fawcett in two important ways: Unlike the colonel, he knows he is no match for this badland; and equally unlike him, he lives to tell the tale.
What a grand tale it is! ... Thoroughly researched, vividly told, this is a thrill ride from start to finish.”
— The Washington Post on The Lost City of Z
“The story of Fawcett is brought vividly alive ... Poisoned arrows, cannibalism, impenetrable canopies of rainforest, incomprehensible maps, utility-pole-size pythons, stiff upper lips, gray-bearded geographers, steam packets, naked jungle folk and incessant drumming ... all figure boldly in the epic. ... What makes Mr. Grann’s telling of the story so captivating is that he decides not simply to go off in search of yet more relics of our absent hero—but to go off himself in search of the city that Fawcett was looking for so heroically when he suddenly went AWOL.”
— Simon Winchester, The Wall Street Journal on The Lost City of Z
“A smart biographical page-turner whose vivid narrative chronicles Fawcett’s extraordinary life and harrowing adventures. ... Grann is a terrific researcher and writer.”
“Grann brings Fawcett’s remarkable story to a beautifully written, perfectly paced fruition. The character portrait that emerges is priceless.”
“An unfathomably riveting narrative ... In a hyperconnected and exhaustively charted world, here is a revelation about wildness and the mad desire to plunge into it.”
— GQ
“A fascinating yarn that touches on science, history, and some truly obsessive personalities.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“Grann is no hard-as-nails explorer, and his self-deprecating personal narrative—he can barely find his way out of a Manhattan camping store, he totes his laptop into the jungle—serves as a comic counterpoint to the superhuman exploits of Fawcett. Grann may not be able to hack the wilderness very well, but as a storyteller he’s first-rate ... The neat trick Grann pulls off is restoring a pre-modern legend in the postmodern consciousness.”
— Outside
“The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is distinguished foremost by the fine writing and research of author David Grann. ... Did Grann find the lost city, the counterpart of conquistadors’ tales of El Dorado, the refutation of years of firm belief that the Amazon ‘for all its fauna and flora, is inimical to human life,’ especially a large sophisticated civilization? It’s worth reading every page of this marvelous book to find out.”
— Bloomberg and The Houston Chronicle
“Grann has an extraordinary sense of pacing, and his scenes of forest adventure are dispatched in passages of swift, arresting simplicity. ... Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker who’s proved himself capable of writing about anything, from Sherlock Holmes aficionados to New York City’s underground water system, … manages mostly to clear up the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s 1925 disappearance. More than that, however, he discovers—and it would be unfair to a splendid, suspenseful book to say just how—what a few jungle anthropologists have come to believe is the surprising truth about Z. By his own journalistic autopsis, he vindicates not only Fawcett’s obsession with Z but his own obsession with Fawcett.”
— Bookforum on The Lost City of Z
“When you were younger did you love reading novels of dangerous exploits in fabulous, far-off parts of this world or others — H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne and “Lost World” kind of stuff? If so, and if you want to recapture some of that blood-stirring reading experience, you need look no further than David Grann’s “The Lost City of Z.” And all of it is true.”
“The story has everything to fire the imagination: Romance, nostalgia, bravery, monomania, hardship, adventure, science, tragedy, mystery. ... The Lost City of Z does not disappoint. It is at once a biography of Fawcett, a history of the era of exploration, a science book on the nature and ethnography of the Amazon, and a thrilling armchair adventure.”
— The Orlando Sentinel
“New Yorker journalist David Grann relies on Fawcett’s never-before published diaries to pick up the trail of one of the most enduring mysteries of the early 20th century. In the gripping The Lost City of Z, Grann toggles between a biographic portrait of the near-mythic figure of Fawcett and his own modern-day attempt to reconstruct the ill-fated expedition. ... What makes Fawcett such a fascinating biography subject are his contradictions. ... It’s hard not to care about the fate of this man who pushed himself so far beyond the normal limits of human capacity. And to read “The Lost City of Z” is to feel grateful that Grann himself bothered to set out for the Amazon in search of the bones of an explorer whose body was long ago reclaimed by the jungle.”
A “fascinating, epic story of exploration and obsession ...Impressively researched and skillfully crafted ... The author brilliantly re-creates Fawcett’s perilous Amazon expeditions. ... Grann’s tale is a gripping journey into the unknown.”
“A blockbuster tale of adventure.”
— Adam Begley, The New York Observer
“I am entranced by The Lost City of Z.”
— Phyllis Meras, The Providence Journal
“Grann’s account of Fawcett’s push to map the unknown and find the mythical El Dorado is a thrilling yarn. It’s satisfying despite what we’ve learned about the follies of imperialism and taming nature, despite the knowledge that Fawcett failed in his quest and vanished, leaving no trace. Satisfying, for Grann also writes about his own sometimes clumsy search for the true end to Fawcett’s saga, and in so doing he delivers a gratifying way of looking at a failure that may well have been a success. ... What he finds is what makes “The Lost City of Z” so gratifying, and in the end he, and we along with him, find ourselves stunned by what Percy Fawcett discovered.”
“What [Grann] found should help change how we think about the Amazon. By turns a biography of Fawcett and an account of Grann’s own journey into the jungle, The Lost City of Z is perfect for armchair travelers and readers with fond childhood memories of books recounting tales of adventure in the dark wild. Read it, shiver with delight and thank your lucky stars you’re never going to get as close to a candirú as Fawcett and Grann did.”
— The Richmond Times
“Fast-paced adventure ... Grann delights us with the lure of obsession under a canopy of trees.’
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
“By interweaving the great story of Fawcett with his own investigative escapades in South America and Britain, Grann provides an in-depth, captivating character study that has the relentless energy of a classic adventure tale.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Lost City of Z