The Rivers Amazon

A vast and primeval world comes vividly to life in Alex Shoumatoff's eight-month odyssey through Amazonia. Travelling by bus, plane, boat and on foot, Shoumatoff followed the river and it's tributaries to their headwaters high in the Peruvian Andes, discovering a hauntingly beautiful, sometimes deadly, twilight world where soaring trees compete for the sun; a hothouse teeming with exotic plants, animals, insects, birds and fish - many still unclassified; home to peoples usually hidden from outsiders' eyes, including headhunters and cannibals; and a great riverine web that spreads over an area nearly as large as the continental United States. Here is travel writing at its best, and a classic portrait of one of our planet's most threatened ecosystems.