Classics

Here at the dawn of the publication of Jan Morris' final book, is her very first. Fresh from her successful scoop reporting on the first Everest ascent in 1953, she spent a year journeying by car, train, ship, and aircraft across the United States. "I did not know it then, and nor did America, but chance had brought me across the Atlantic at the very apex of American happiness," says Morris, in her new Introduction. In her brilliant prose, Morris records with exuberance and curiosity a time of innocence in the U.S.--when television was in its infancy, the Big Mac had not yet been invented, adn the popular song of the day was "Chatanooga Choo-Choo."

This is a riveting firsthand account of Leonard Clark's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola - reputedly home to enormous reserves of gold - in the Amazon rain forest east of the Peruvian Andes. En route, he acquires vast knowledge about the lives of indigenous peoples. A former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Clark is joined on his expedition by Inez Pokorny, a gutsy, multilingual female sidekick and fellow explorer. Their treacherous journey includes encounters with headhunting JÖvaro Indians, man-eating jaguars, forty-foot-long anacondas, poisonous plants, and shamanistic healers. "An exploration to rival Lewis and Clark's, remarkable both for its sense of adventure and for the breadth of its reporting." - Joe Kane, author of Savages and Running the Amazon