David Grann is now 49 years old and was born in New York City in 1967. He is married to Kyra Darnton, a television producer, and has two children. He is a writer for the New Yorker magazine and The Lost City of Z is his first best-selling book (and was made into a movie) and was rated #4 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2009. Grann’s other works include an anthology of twelve essays, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, published in 2010 and his current task of writing a book about the Osage Indian murders. This book revolves around a more negative aspect of wanderlust. Grann writes about explorers’ obsessions, in this case with the Amazon Forest and hidden cities filled with gold and advanced civilizations. …show more content…
Although this story is about how over a hundred people died trying to find and rescue Fawcett and also find the Lost City of Z, there is not much passion about these tragedies. All of these people knew the endless amount of dangers in the Amazon Rain Forest, the most dangerous being hostile cannibalous tribes. Certain documented deaths were expressed with some passion and sympathy, but overall only the facts were displayed and in an organized manner. I think that the way the author writes helps his premise but I also believe he could have been a bit more passionate and tried to turn the book into more of a “story”. The book ends with the confirmation that advanced civilizations existed in the Amazon years ago and no longer exist because of disease. Grann wording suggests that there are other things that twentieth century scientists have deemed impossible and will deem impossible could truly be real and may simply exist in a form that exceeds their comprehension. The Amazon Rain Forest is a popular topic because it is roughly the size of Australia and its canopies hide secrets that have yet to be explored. It would be surprising if there weren’t more positive discoveries in the …show more content…
Other cultures are interesting because they are different and we don’t usually understand the things that they do and why they do them. Learning about other people’s traditions from all over the world shows the diversity in people’s beliefs, habits and routine occurrences in everyday lives. Does wanderlust have any correlation with eleutheromania? In the book it is said that "Explorers are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society. Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and a need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow men.” Not wanting to be confined by society all the time can be viewed as a form of needing freedom, therefore following the definition of eleutheromania. So, yes, wanderlust does have something to do with eleutheromania. How does traveling expand one’s horizons? Because both Fawcett and Grann traveled, the whole world’s horizons were expanded. The two men proved to the world that advanced civilizations did indeed exist in the Amazon, and the tribespeople living there today were discovered and challenged every scientist's view in that area of
The enlightenment period was full of social and intellectual growth. This time period changed the way people thought of the world and exposed the world to different cultures. It brought the world into several revolutions that will later contribute to great change for the modern world. Travel was significant during the enlightenment due to the enlightenment ideas that knowledge and information was gained through experience. In order for the people to get a better understanding of the world and gain information about other cultures, they had to travel to these people. During this era and time period of the enlightenment, travel was significant in order to get a quality and endless education. Denis Diderot shows the significance that travel did
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson tells the story of Daniel Burnham’s World Fair and H.H. Holmes’ murder spree. The tale focuses much on the conflict between good and evil, light and dark. However, the book also goes deeper, utilizing contrast to demonstrate the greed, exclusiveness, and exploitation ever present in the Gilded Age of America.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson contains extremely detailed information of the happenings during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 between two men whom had never met. This #1 National Bestseller includes the years of building before and during the Fair and the challenges that came with the famous architect, Daniel H. Burnham. The pages also contain disturbing information about the urban serial killer, Dr. H. H. Holmes, who brutally murdered at least nine individuals throughout the years while construction went on before and during the Chicago World’s Fair. Those who are interested in murder trials and history of the United States would enjoy this book.
Many people are prevented from traveling worldwide by finances or principalities. In Tales of a Female Nomad, children's author Rita Golden Gelman abandons her comfortable, even luxurious lifestyle, at the age of forty-eight to become a nomad. This author's soulfulness stretches from the page to the readers, enveloping them in a vivid experience that few could otherwise imagine.
Life experiences allow individual to grasp the meaning of culture, people in our surrounding, and value the ethnic diversity into our society. Culture consists of the knowledge people use to live
Whether you have experienced a lot of traveling to other countries and continents or perhaps you have never left the East coast, it can be assumed; whether through school or a work environment, you have had at least one experience dealing with different nationalities and cultures. The realization is that we may come from different places and have different backgrounds but most people, cultures included, have more in common then we could imagine.
It is not uncommon for an individual to describe a culture that is not their own as exotic, unique, or dated. However, they would be overlooking the idea and importance of cultural relativism on a global scale. It is understandable that a cultural aspect, different from what an individual is used to interacting in, seems hard to understand or too complex to recognize, but it is important to look at one’s own culture and others from multiple angles. The lack of familiarity of another culture that often produces words like “exotic” can be put away with a proper amount of time researching, understanding, and appreciating the normal behavior of another culture. In the paper, I will discuss the concepts that go along with cultural relativism and relate these to the stories found in “Nest in the Wind” and examples from our current society.
The general argument made by Elizabeth Weil in her work “The woman who walked 10,000 miles” is that travelers explore seeking experience. More specifically, that people such as Robert Falcon Scott and Sarah Marquis have a purpose through their journey; to feel alive. She writes “at night there was nothing to do. But near the end of the trip, she had a sort-of epiphany something happened… chasing the inexplicable sensation is why she walks”. In this passage Weil suggest there more to explorers than is sought to be. Furthermore, the word explorer itself has a depth in its meaning. Weil writes “the word explorer suggest morally superior... a man or women who braves the nettle against nature to discover a new terrain, expanding our species.. Implies
In conclusion, this book gave me a whole new view on life and how we can interact better with different people. The book emphasized that culture is key to understanding people. Sometimes it is hard to connect with others because they are indicated as different but in due time we can adjust. Every culture has their own traditions when it comes to what they eat, what to wear, dating, various ceremonies, holidays and more. Reading this book helped me become more accepting of who I am and where I come from.
Our world is made up of many diverse cultures. These cultures have influenced many aspects of this world that we live in today. Understanding and developing knowledge about these cultures is vitally important. Having the ability to understand other cultures will allow you to look deeper into your own cultural values.
In conclusion, culture can shape one’s identity but also confuse people. The perfect balance of mixed culture can be found with just some guidance of an adult, song, or even a girlfriend. Culture is a very important and individual aspect of everyone’s
The first eight chapters of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon investigates the legend of Percy Fawcett, an English explorer and archeologist who vanished searching for an Amazonian lost city of gold in 1925. Initially the author attempts to “simply record how generations of scientists and adventurers became fatally obsessed with solving the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century” (Grann 4). However, the non-fiction narrative quickly becomes an adventurous detective story, switching perspective between Grann’s modern investigation and details about Fawcett’s ill-fated expedition. The book describes how the Amazon, one of the last true unexplored wildernesses on earth, seems to attract
...f the culture, like their pop culture, food, historical background, traditions and current costumes are all the things that make such an unique, interesting culture.
... so many things about interacting with others and about understanding different cultures, Things are different everywhere you do because someone was raised that way or because they believe in something different than you. Culture isn’t all about the way someone lives or the society that they live in. Culture is about things you own, the way you act, where you live and your lifestyle. I now look at people with a different culture than me with so much more respect. I don’t know what they have gone through or what kind of culture they grew up with, life is harder in other places then it is America. I understand the differences in the way people live and see things. The culture and diversity in the world is amazing. Overall I loved this class, I learned things that I never could have imagined learning, I am impressed with the book and the class discussions that we have.
... executed in order to set off into the world alone. The influence that independent travel has on an individual is a splendor upon riches because it does so much for a person, and provides humans with a sense of the world. How a person can makes new friends and learn about new cultures and accept other people’s way of living. With its educational purposes traveling alone can bring, offers an endless amount of living data that tops any history book or internet page. Traveling is concrete history that is continuing around everyone. It can provide people to look through different lenses and experience aspects of life that they know they will never experience again in their lifetimes. Traveling alone provides an endless journey and an empty page in the minds scrapbook that is waiting to be filled with new memories and the endless amount of true belonging and bliss.