Books
A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, by Alfred Russel Wallace, published in 1895, is the Amazon travel memoir of the author, a biologist and colleague of Charles Darwin.
Wizard of the Upper Amazon: The Story of Manuel Córdova-Rios, by F. Bruce Lamb, published in 1993, documents life among a South American indigenous tribe. (Available as an Audiobook.)
Floods of Fortune: Ecology and Economy Along the Amazon, by Michael Goulding, published in 1995, features natural history and economy of the region.
One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, by Wade Davis, published in 1997, is the story of two generations of scientific explorers.
The Amazon River Forest: A Natural History of Plants, Animals, and People, by Nigel Smith, published in 1999, examines the culture and nature of the region.
The Mapmaker’s Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon, by Robert Whitaker, published in 2004, reports about the 18th century experiment, known as the French Geodesic Mission, by Europeans, to explore the interior of South America and measure one degree of latitude, at the equator, in order to confirm Isaac Newton’s theories about the shape of the Earth. The story includes the drama of a couple separated across thousands of miles, and the solo journey of the wife through the Amazon. (Available as an Audiobook.)
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard, published in 2006, chronicles the Amazon journey of the former US president after his 1912 election defeat. (Available as an Audiobook.)
Territorial Policies in the Amazon, by Neli Aparecida de Mello, published in 2006 in Portuguese, explores Amazon policies starting from 1970 with specific focus on government programs and multilateral development programs developed after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization, by Mark London and Brian Kelly, published in 2007, follows the transformation of the region and the conflict between development and conservation.
Thief at the End of the World, by Joe Jackson, published in 2009, recounts the journey of Henry Wickham who smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds from the Amazon to Great Britain and helped to start the rubber boom of the early 20th century.
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin, published in 2009, reports about Henry Ford’s ill-fated 1920s effort to create a rubber plantation town in a remote area of the Amazon in Brazil. (Available as an Audiobook).
The Gold Book of the Amazon, by Augusto Meirelles, published in 2009 in Portuguese, brings the people, biodiversity and myths of the amazon up for reflection while considering the threats they face.
Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon, by John Hemming, published in 2009, explores the history of the region through key personalities – explorers, archaeologists, botanists, etc.
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, published in 2009, is a modern study of the 1925 journey of a British explorer who disappeared in the Amazon. (Available as an Audiobook.)
Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: Struggle for Justice in the Amazon, by Gomercindo Rodrigues, published in 2009, gives a primary account of the Amazonian activist Chico Mendes’s innovative approach to protecting the forest while supporting workers, and the struggle between Brazil’s rubber tappers and ranchers that ultimately lead to Mendes’s murder.
Schools in the Forest: How Grassroots Education Brought Political Empowerment to the Brazilian Amazon, by Denis Heyck, published in 2010, takes readers on a journey into the Brazilian rainforest with the grassroots activists and teachers who have helped transform the Brazilian state of Acre through their courageous work.
The Devil and Mr. Casement: One Man’s Battle for Human Rights in South America’s Heart of Darkness, by Jordan Goodman, published in 2010, recounts the 1910 investigation by a British journalist of a crime against humanity in the Peruvian Amazon that history has almost forgotten, but whose exposure in 1912 sent shockwaves around the world.
Deep Jungle: Journey to the Heart of the Rainforest, by Fred Pearce, published in 2010, examines the biodiversity of rainforests and considers their future.
River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana’s Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon, by Buddy Levy, published in 2011, tells the story of a 16th century explorer in the Amazon. (Available as an Audiobook.)
The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon, by Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn, published in 2011, reports about the destruction of the forest and solutions.
Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America, by Adrian Forsyth and Ken Miyata, published in 2011, features essays on habitats, ecology, plants and animals.
Management of the Amazon: Assets, Policies and Proposals, by Jacques Marcovitch, published in 2011 in Portuguese, explores management of the Amazon biome while considering biodiversity, water, deforestation, social challenges and other contemporary controversies.
Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. One Step at a Time, by Ed Stafford, published in 2012, reveals one man’s history-making journey down the full length of the Amazon river. (Available as an Audiobook in Danish.)
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes, by Scott Wallace, published in 2012, documents the true story of a journey to track an uncontacted indigenous people.
The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest, by Andrew Revkin, published in 2012, tells the story of the murder of an Amazonian activist by cattle ranchers, and the impacts of Chico Mendes’s activism and death on the broader fight for the Amazon.
Noble Savages, by Napoloeon Chagnon, published in 2014, tells the story of Chagnon and his anthropological research of the Yanomamo Indians in the Venezuelan Amazon and the ensuring controversy that his work ignited.
Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon, by Paul Rosolie, published in 2015, is the autobiographical story of a young explorer in the Amazon wilderness. (Available as an Audiobook.)
Cattle in the Backlands: Mato Grosso and the Evolution of Ranching in the Brazilian Tropics, by Robert W. Wilcox, published in 2017, recounts the history of ranching in Mato Grosso, Brazil, exploring three key aspects: the economic transformation of remote areas through modern technical inputs, the resulting labor and land tenure changes, and the long-term impact of ranching on ecosystems.
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, by Daniel Everett, published in 2017, features the story of the author, a missionary, learning from the Pirahã tribe and losing his religion. (Available as an Audiobook.)
The Dilemma of Amazonian Development, by Emilio Moran, published in 2019, combines anthropology, geography, ecology, economics, and sociology to the analysis of the Amazon River region and its development, exploring the impact of development on Amazonian populations and the results of rural and urban growth strategies.
Amazonia: An Economy of Nature Knowledge, by Ricardo Abramovay, published in 2019 in Portuguese, dispels the notion that economic growth in the Amazon requires deforestation.
The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Mark Plotkin, published in 2020, presents an overview of the ecosystem and the challenges that face it.
Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World’s Last Frontier, by Heriberto Araujo, published in 2023, features the struggle of Maria Joel Dias da Costa and her fight for justice against the Brazilian legal system and the land baron’s who murdered her husband. (Available as an Audiobook.)
The Amazon in Times of War, by Marcos Colon, published in 2024, features a series of essays detailing physical assaults and destructive state policies enacted in the Brazilian Amazon, with a focus on 2018 when Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of Brazil.
How I Became an Amazonian: An Investigative Journalist’s Memoir of the World’s Largest Rainforest, by Lucio Flavio Pinto, published in 2025, synthesizes nearly six decades of the author’s reporting on the Amazon region with his own personal journey into becoming an Amazon activist, exploring the challenges of journalism in the region.
