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.
