Written by Candice Millard

“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

Extensively researched and exhaustive in detail, The River of Doubt tells the tale of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing journey down an uncharted tributary of the Amazon River in 1914. Though a true story, the book reads very much like a novel in its narrative progress, power, and detail, as well as the extent to which we readers sympathize with the plights of the memorable characters who accompanied Roosevelt on the “the expedition of inhuman proportions”: Brazilian explorer and the expedition’s co-commander, Candido Rondon, George Cherrie the naturalist, Joao Lyra, the surveyor, Kermit, Roosevelt’s son, several Brazilian camaradas, and the fiery, audacious, adventure-seeking Roosevelt himself—all of whom struggled against all odds to make it from the headwaters of the River of Doubt a thousand miles down to where the river met the Aripuana River. The exploration of the unknown river was a cause the men felt worthy of dying for.

In a no-nonsense direct prose style, Candice Millard re-creates the devastating journey during which the men were besieged by poisonous insects and snakes—masters of disguise in the jungle—as well as hostile Indians, who had not yet had any contact with the outside world, treacherous white water rapids and whirlpools, near-starvation and disease, relentless rain, drowning, murder, and the rainforest itself, which Millard describes as “the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet.” These men risked their lives in the name of scientific exploration and discovery. Roosevelt, with his larger-than-life personality, was drawn like a magnet to punishing tests of endurance and danger. Initially, the trip became a way for Roosevelt to escape his humiliating defeat in the Presidential campaign of 1912. But it soon became a shared struggle for survival where the greatest enemy of all was the jungle itself. This is an amazing account of an ultimate test of human endurance.