Fairly frequently, I go to Goodwill Stores, Salvation Army Surplus Stores, and other less well known discount stores specifically to buy used books. I have on one or two occasions found rare books of considerable value and on many occasions I have found books which I have read and loved for 50 cents or a dollar. A few weeks ago I hit the reading jackpot in Paintsville, Kentucky, at the Goodwill Store there when I found "The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey" by Candice Millard. My wife Candice and I had recently read David Grann's book "The Lost City of Z" about the Amazon explorations and disappearance of British explorer Percy Fawcett, which had made fleeting references to former President Theodore Roosevelt's expedition into the Amazon with Brazilian explorer and Army officer Candido Rondon during which they had traveled the length of the River of Doubt and been the first explorers to do so.
I had no idea who Candice Millard was but picked the book up at the Goodwill Store as soon as I saw the title. Millard is a former National Geographic writer and was an excellent person to choose to write about Roosevelt's trip since she has traveled the remote parts of the world on many assignments. It is a rare kind of book, one that won't let you put it down, that keeps you rooting for the protagonists, and is backed by impeccable and immense research. The book is based largely on the journals of four of the men on the expedition: former President Theodore Roosevelt who had traveled to remote parts of the world previously for both military assignments and hunting trips; Colonel Candido Rondon, the original discoverer of The River of Doubt and a world famous explorer in his own right who had been the director of the Brazilian attempts to run telegraph lines into the remote Amazon; the American naturalist George Cherrie who had progressed from being a child laborer in a sawmill at age 12 to becoming one of the most famous naturalists who ever lived having had 6 species of animals and birds named for him; and Millard also depended heavily on the journals of President Roosevelt's son Kermit who had been building roads and bridges in the remote portions of Brazil prior to the expedition. Millard artfully weaves her own meticulous research work and excerpts from the first person journals of the men on the expedition into a wonderful book about one of the most interesting and riveting stories and one of the world's most dangerous and difficult trips ever taken in the early twentieth century. The photo below is of T. Roosevelt in the American west.
During the roughly 3 month trip, Theodore Roosevelt nearly died due to his past history of having been shot in an assassination attempt combined with other health problems, the incredible physical challenges of the trip, and the myriad insect borne diseases of the Amazon jungle. By the time the trip ended, Roosevelt was literally near death and had lost over 20% of his body weight. He had been a man all his life who actively sought out physical challenges of an extreme nature while also being an intellectual. Roosevelt was equally matched in those attributes by Rondon and Cherrie. Kermit Roosevelt had been raised by his father to accept and master similar challenges virtually from the cradle and was nearly a match for the other men in those capacities. Rondon also had a native Brazilian right hand man who was similar in physical qualities with a lifetime of experience in Amazon survival. They also had a sizeable contingent of laborers from among the more civilized Amazon tribes who with one exception worked tirelessly to carry the heavy labors of the trip and support the success of the expedition. The one exception was a native Brazilian who was both lazy and dangerous and eventually murdered Rondon's top assistant. The men were able to make brief contact once with that man after he disappeared into the jungle following the murder. They responded by abandoning him in the jungle and he is believed to have either starved to death, been murdered by local tribes of Stone Age natives, or possibly been killed by the native wildlife. The photo below is of T. Roosevelt & C. Rondon.
This book is an amazing story of survival, a portrait of a former American president who was actually capable of taking on the challenges of a world into which almost none of the other presidents in this or any other country would have dared to go, and a story of tremendous achievement by a team of roughly 20 men who could not have been handpicked better to have accomplished the nearly impossible. If you love real history about success against great odds this is the book you should read. The photo below if of George Cherrie.
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