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The scramble for the Amazon and the "Lost paradise" of Euclides da Cunha

2013; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 51; Issue: 03 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.51-1655

1943-5975

Susanna B. Hecht,

Australian Indigenous Culture and History

fortunes of late nineteenth century's imperial and industrial powers depended on a single raw material - rubber - with only one source: basin. And so began scramble for Amazon, a decades-long conflict that found Britain, France, Belgium, and United States fighting with and against new nations of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil for forest's riches. In midst of this struggle, Euclides da Cunha, engineer, journalist, geographer, political theorist, and one of Brazil's most celebrated writers, led a survey expedition to farthest reaches of river, among world's most valuable, dangerous, and little-known landscapes. The Scramble for Amazon tells story of da Cunha's terrifying journey, unfinished novel born from it, and global strife that formed backdrop for both. Haunted by his broken marriage, da Cunha trekked through a beautiful region thrown into chaos by guerrilla warfare, starving migrants, and native slavery. All while, he worked on his masterpiece, a nationalist synthesis of geography, philosophy, biology, and journalism he named the Lost Paradise. Da Cunha intended his epic to unveil Amazon's explorers, spies, natives, and brutal geopolitics, but, as Susanna B. Hecht recounts, he never completed it - his wife's lover shot him dead upon his return. At once biography of an extraordinary writer, a masterly chronicle of social, political, and environmental history of Amazon, and a superb translation of remaining pieces of da Cunha's project, The Scramble for Amazon is a work of thrilling intellectual ambition.