"O'Connor has captured it all with insight, compassion, and a strong dose of humor. I can't recommend this book highly enough."

--Michael Moore, author of Downsize This! and creator of the Emmy award-winning TV Nation.

"Appealing...O'Connor knows the Amazon better than many, but he has been humbled by its complexity."

--Alan Riding, The New York Times Book Review

"A backstage glimpse of the Western world's bizarre cultural collision with the Amazon...a vivid gallery of characters."

--Outside

"O'Connor's portraits of Indians, settlers, government officials, and environmental activists alike are all right on the mark. A literate, unexpectedly funny, and ultimately alarming book."

--Kirkus

Penguin Putnam, Inc. Web Site, April, 2000

A work of literary nonfiction blending reportage, history, anthropology, and personal memoir, Amazon Journal is a unique and critical look at how cultural differences in the Amazon have resulted in incidents ranging from comic misunderstandings to blatant exploitation, environmental disaster, and even genocide. Beginning by revisiting the period in the late 80's when the "save the rainforest" campaign, the indigenous rights movement, and the assassination of Chico Mendes became the focus of a media storm, O'Connor stuck with his story long enough to tell us what happened when the world turned its attention elsewhere.

Peopled by a colorful cast of real-life characters, O'Connor's startling narrative is a journey into a contemporary heart of darkness, a compelling and compassionate look at a vanishing people, and a blistering account of the forces of destruction, both human and environmental, at work within the greatest forest on earth.