The Amazon: Past, Present, and Future

by Alain Gheerbrant

A chronicle of the "discovery," exploration, and exploitation of the Amazon jungle captures the dramatic history of Amazonia through words and pictures, from the first conquistadors in 1542 to the present. Original.

Genres: History

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Alain Gheerbrant (27 December 1920 – 21 February 2013) was a French writer, editor, poet and explorer, noted for his expedition inside the basins of Amazonian rivers.
From 1948 to 1950, Alain Gheerbrant led the Orinoco-Amazon expedition. He travelled through the basin of both rivers for two years and wrote of his travels in L'Expédition Orénoque-Amazone (1952). He is considered the first Westerner who had peaceful contact with the Yanomami Indians and also the first to cross the Parima Mountains between 1948 and 1950. In 1952, he directed a documentary film called Des hommes qu'on appelle sauvages.

He has produced numerous reports all over the world and published Dictionnaire des symboles in 1982, a collaborative work with Jean Chevalier, an encyclopaedia of cultural anthropology about the symbolism of myths and folklore, which was republished 19 times between 1982 and 1997. He has authored an illustrated pocket book for the "Découvertes Gallimard" collection, called L'Amazone, un géant blessé (1988), which has been translated into eleven languages, including English. In 1995, he released his memoir entitled La Transversale.