*All reviews are from online reviews*

The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

Initially I had mixed feelings about Roosevelt, as he was unable to accept he lost the election and he ran again with an oversized ego, and pouted when he lost again. But it turns out, he was brave and selfless, in endless quantities. He and native Brazilian Rondon set out to map a lengthy deadly uncharted Amazon river, one that promised danger and treachery. This book reads like a thriller of the highest order. ( )

The 'river of doubt' tells the harrowing story of President Roosevelt's travels through the South American Rainforest. The story is both inspiring and informative. A must read! ( )

A fine telling of the incredible story of Teddy Roosevelt's exploration of the course of a mostly unknown 1000 mile-long tributary of the Amazon river in 1913 - 1914 when he was age 55. In addition to the usual accouterments, piranha, the candiru fish, and hostile cannibalistic Indians, at least three characters, the former President, Colonel Cândido Rondon, and the president's second son, Kermit, are interesting principal actors. The story is complemented by appropriate review of the natural history of the forest and the geology of the river basin.

Note that accounts of the effects of the candiru fish may be exaggerated:
https://www.decodedscience.org/candiru-a-dont-pee-in-the-water-horror-story-debu...

My e-book edition has two maps in it that you might be able to read with a magnifying glass, but no photographs. But there is a nice public domain image here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:River-doubt-team.jpg
that says that it is scanned from an edition of this book.

President Roosevelt's own account, Through the Brazilian Wilderness is available and well-reviewed on Goodreads. ( )

OVERALL: readable. Not too dry. I liked that extra information about Colonel Rondon was included, because he was extremely important to the expedition (and to Brazil). I found myself really interested in one of the scientists and one of the surveyors, as well. I think it's good that the narrative wasn't 100% focused on Roosevelt. I would have said 4 stars, until I was 75% through. I felt like things got wobbly in the last quarter, just when they should have been reaching full steam. Half a star off for disorganization in the last 25% of the book, and half a star off for the suicide comment (below). Three stars left.

DETAILS:
The long asides about the Amazon environment are sometimes good, but sometimes drift into weird and improbable speculation. (Example: Saying Roosevelt felt some kind of kinship with the land of South America because back during the Triassic period, Africa and South America were fit right next to each other, before continental drift separated them, and his close kinship with Africa would translate over to South American for that reason. What? Instead of, say, maybe he felt kinship because he had a well documented personal philosophy and outlook about the unknown that made him feel kinship for just about everything? Just a guess.) There are a LOT of asides. Roosevelt was a sortof-naturalist, but if he didn't write about how Howler monkeys produce sound, or the cultivation of Brazil nuts (which they couldn’t find), how the local people catch fish (which Roosevelt never saw), poison frogs and sloths (which Roosevelt never saw or wrote about?)... why are we hearing so much about them? All these long asides, without any connection to the action of the Roosevelt expedition itself, feels like padding. One particular passage (about the specific rituals of war that the local people followed) is repeated almost word-for-word, even though the tribe never actually attacked the expedition, so, it wasn’t particularly relevant (either time). Of course some information about the people and the ants and the trees is certainly warranted, but there were some weird excesses.

Around the 75% mark, just when the expedition is really getting into the crises, we suddenly get all these flashback biographies for people who were already introduced into the narrative. It slowed everything down and distracted from the building crises. Why not share their backgrounds when Roosevelt met them? Or when we hear about them all sharing stories around the campfire in the evenings? Their backstories were sliced and diced and thrown all over the place in a weird order like somebody put biographies in a salad shooter and aimed it at the last 25% of the novel. The epilogue was particularly disorganized.

What really made me mad was the note in the epilogue about one of the expedition members who committed suicide, years later. The author characterizes him as being "too weak" to save himself / resist his Depression / stop himself from committing suicide. That's not how you describe someone who has Depression, or suicidal thoughts, or who commits suicide. It's A Thing. You just DON'T.

MINOR QUIBBLES:

The narrative keeps reminding us that Colonel Rondon is only 5’3”. But in photos of Rondon and Roosevelt standing side by side, Rondon is only slightly shorter than Roosevelt, who was (supposedly) 5’9”. There's no way Rondon was 5'3". Unless those are go-go boots. But (as I have learned from this book) Rondon was not the kind of guy who would wear go-go boots in the rainforest for vanity, so....

The expedition had multiple purposes, including mapping and surveying the river and collecting scientific specimens and field observations. We heard a lot about the survey activities, but almost nothing about the Naturalist's side of things. Did they give up? Did they bring anything back? When the author lists what luggage Roosevelt had to abandon and what he kept, she never mentioned the manuscript he had been writing - implying it was left in the jungle? Was it really left behind? Did the scientists with them bring back scientific specimens, or observations and notes? How did the museum feel about the results of the expedition? If the only 'results' they got were mapping, was the museum disappointed? How was Roosevelt's book about the trip received? (Why did we hear about World War One instead of this?)

I'm ok with the occasional 'they must have thought' sliding into this kind of narrative. If you spend enough time reading someone's journal, you actually can guess how they must have felt at some other, undescribed, moment. Or sometimes it's just obvious because of human nature. But sometimes the author just goes too far and defies common sense. The one where I actually said "Oh now really," out loud is a spoiler so I won't say it... but it was there. There were a few of them, in fact.

Don't call the Expedition 'enemies' of the nearby tribe, when the tribe has clearly and definitely and for a sustained period of time, chosen NOT to attack them. Also, after all the work Rondon put into showing that they were NOT enemies? Don't undermine his (downright heroic) efforts like that. Call them 'interlopers' or 'trespassers' or 'weirdos in khaki' or something. Not 'enemies.'

MINOR MINOR QUIBBLE - but I thought it was meaningful

The author describes Roosevelt deliriously quoting the same poem over and over - which is a historical fact. But (unlike another biographer, Edmund Morris) this author only quotes the first two lines. She doesn't include the lines about the river, which is what makes it all make a kind of sense.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree"
vs.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea."
I have no idea which version is accurate as to what Roosevelt was actually saying in his fever delirium, or if anybody actually knows. Maybe somebody's journal just says 'he kept repeating the opening lines of Coleridge's Kubla Khan'. It's not like they had a lot of time and energy to write things down at that point. But Millard's version sounds absolutely batty, while Morris's version makes a kind of sense (because of the difficulties trying to measure and survey this dark river). It's Roosevelt's addled mind still being topical and poetic about dying in the jungle, even when he's half-conscious. Miller's version is weak and silly. Morris's version is darkly beautiful. Just saying. ( )