Amazon Journal: Dispatches from a Vanishing Frontier - Paperback

A work of literary nonfiction blending reportage, history, anthropology, and personal memoir, Amazon Journal is a unique and critical look at how cultural differences in the Amazon have resulted in incidents ranging from comic misunderstandings to blatant exploitation, environmental disaster, and even genocide. Beginning by revisiting the period in the late 80's when the "save the rainforest" campaign, the indigenous rights movement, and the assassination of Chico Mendes became the focus of a media storm, O'Connor stuck with his story long enough to tell us what happened when the world turned its attention elsewhere.Peopled by a colorful cast of real-life characters, O'Connor's startling narrative is a journey into a contemporary heart of darkness, a compelling and compassionate look at a vanishing people, and a blistering account of the forces of destruction, both human and environmental, at work within the greatest forest on earth., The gold rush taking place in the Amazon, writes documentary filmmaker Geoffrey O'Connor, already promises to yield more ore than the Klondike gold rush that took place a century ago. Yet it has been little reported, and the quest for gold has already cost thousands of lives as the Indian nations of the Amazonian rainforest are overrun. O'Connor brings us grim news, to be sure, but with flair and sometimes even pointed humor, such as when he describes rock star Sting's descent into the jungle to deliver pious sermons about the sanctity of the unbroken forest; Sting can always jet out, O'Connor notes, whereas the Indians, and most of the gold miners, have no where else to go. Anyone with an interest in the area will want to read this well-crafted and sometimes alarming book.