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The Unconquered

In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

Audiobook
81 of 81 copies available
81 of 81 copies available
Even today there remain tribes in the far reaches of the Amazon rainforest that have avoided contact with modern civilization. In this gripping first-person account of adventure and survival, author Scott Wallace chronicles an expedition into the Amazon's uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest's secrets while moving ever closer to a possible encounter with one such tribe—the mysterious flecheiros, or "People of the Arrow." On assignment for National Geographic, Wallace joins Brazilian explorer Sydney Possuelo at the head of a thirty-four-man team that ventures deep into the unknown in search of the tribe. Possuelo's mission is to protect the Arrow People. But the information he needs to do so can only be gleaned by entering a world of permanent twilight beneath the forest canopy.
Danger lurks at every step as the expedition seeks out the Arrow People even while trying to avoid them. Laced with lessons from anthropology and the Amazon's own convulsed history, and boasting a Conradian cast of unforgettable characters—all driven by a passion to preserve the wild, but also wracked by fear, suspicion, and the desperate need to make it home alive—The Unconquered reveals this critical battleground in the fight to save the planet as it has rarely been seen, wrapped in a tale of adventure.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 8, 2011
      National Geographic writer Wallace recounts his grueling odyssey into the remotest stretches of the Amazon Basin as he tracks down the ”Arrow People,” one of the last “uncontacted” tribes left in the world. Wallace’s 34-member expedition was led by Sydney Possuelo, a legendary sertanista (a Brazilian hybrid of woodsman, explorer, and anthropologist). On the three-month trek by riverboat, canoe, and foot, the expedition was threatened by pumas, starvation, disease, hostile natives, and tensions that develop between men in close quarters. The mercurial Possuelo’s mission seems paradoxical—he wants to clearly identify the “Arrow People,” but only so that in the future they will be left completely alone. The book is overlong, and in the early chapters, Wallace tends to repeat grand pronouncements about culture, history, and the environment. His best writing focuses on the details and daily grind of the expedition and, as the book progresses, on the simple struggle for survival. Wallace nicely captures the hostility and paranoia that threaten to tear the group apart. He’s equally unsparing of his own insecurity and weakness, and the contrast between the threatened Amazon and the exhausted men brings the region’s harsh beauties to life.

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  • English

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