A Different Kind of Amazon

Nine times out of ten, if I'm saying "books" and "Amazon" in the same sentence, I'm talking about the kind with free super saver shipping. But this time, I just finished a double header of books about the Amazon jungle — and the horrors I encountered therein have convinced me to keep my ass planted firmly on the couch for the remainder of my sedentary but not-eaten-by-crocodiles life. First I read Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, in which a team of research scientists studying a native tribe's miracle fertility drug disappears into the jungle for months, then years. The pharmaceutical [...]