At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.
The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon
that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world.
Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas
glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a
roiling cauldron.
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his
sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the
first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon.
Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido
Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that
many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the
map of the western hemisphere forever.
Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of
hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater
rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and
a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was
brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings
alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative
thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who
ever lived.
From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest
night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling
debut.
