The River of Doubt by Candace Millard

  •  (18) Roosevelt felt that didn't have an opportunity for greatness as president

  • "If Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now."

  • (30) In July Roosevelt left New York for five weeks to go cougar hunting in Arizona with his two youngest sons, Archie and Quentin

  • (54) Prior to Andes Mountains formation, the Amazon River flowed westward

    • The Andes ---> vast inland Amazon Sea for millions of years

    • 1.6 million years ago - Amazon River broke through to the Atlantic

    • Left behind the world's greatest river system and a basin of rich sediments and fertile lowlands

      • Brazil is 250,000 sq. miles > contiguous US

  • (150) Similar to modern economy (ever-increasing specialization of labor and markets), each increase in competition among rainforest inhabitants was a powerful source of further specialization

    • Rewarded entrepreneurial variations of life that can exploit skills and opportunities that previously went unrecognized/didn't exist

  • (154) They left a marker at their campsite every morning, even though it would likely be destroyed

    • Tangible connection to civilization/reminder of who they were/why they were there

    • Rondon had learned through excruciating hardship how important routine, discipline, and military ritual were in maintaining morale during an expedition into the Amazon

  • (323) Penicillin, one of the first antibiotics, wouldn't be discovered for another fourteen years, and would not be widely prescribed until World War II

  • (323) Roosevelt was so sick that Roosevelt couldn't lift himself out of the canoe when Raymundo Jose Marques paddled over to the expedition

    • "His condition, however, did not diminish the oldseringueiro'sawe when he learned that the ragged and stricken man he saw lying in the roughest sort of dugout canoe had once been the present of the United States!"

  • (337) In the one week it took the steamship to travel from Bridgetown, Barbados, to New York, Roosevelt read dozens of books

  • (343) "There is nothing more foolish and cowardly than to be beaten down by sorrow which nothing we can do will change."