At the age of fifty-five, former president Theodore Roosevelt took part in an expedition to the far reaches of the Amazon. Mind you, in time and context this was an extraordinary thing; at this point in history, you'd need to make an expedition into space to get as far away from workaday life as Roosevelt's party went. This book is Roosevelt's journal during the expedition into the unknown in the name of science -- an expedition into very real and very mortal peril. Formerly called Rio da Duvida ( River of Doubt ), the Roosevelt River is named after him. He traveled into the central region of Brazil during the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition of 1913 14. The expedition, led by Roosevelt and Candido Rondon, Brazil's most famous explorer and the river's discoverer, sought to determine where and by which course the river flowed into the Amazon."