For Wade Davis, Colombia was the first country that captured his heart and gave him license to be free. Here, he tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of their remarkable land.

Braiding together memoir, history and journalism, Magdalena is at once an absorbing adventure through a spectacular landscape and a kaleidoscopic picture of Colombia as it stands on the verge of a new period of peace.

‘Outstanding… Davis tells epic tales of passion, violence and ambition with tremendous narrative verve’ Sunday Times, Books of the Year

‘A wonderful evocation of a lifetime’s travel in Colombia’ Spectator, Books of the Year

In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Northern Amazon of Colombia.

The world’s leading authority on the hallucinogens and medicinal plants of the region, he returned after twelve years of travelling through South America in a dug-out canoe, mapping uncharted rivers, living among local tribes and documenting the knowledge of shamans.

Thirty years later, his student Wade Davis landed in Bogota to follow in his mentor’s footsteps – so creating an epic tale of undaunted adventure, a compelling work of natural history and a testament to the spirit of scientific exploration.

A monumental work of history, biography and adventure – the First World War, Mallory and Mount Everest – now serialised in the BBC R4 documentary The Crowning of Everest.

‘The price of life is death’

For Mallory, as for all of his generation, death was but ‘a frail barrier that men crossed, smiling and gallant, every day’. As climbers they accepted a degree of risk unimaginable before the war. What mattered now was how one lived, and the moments of being alive.

While the quest for Mount Everest may have begun as a grand imperial gesture, it ended as a mission of revival for a country and a lost generation bled white by war. In a monumental work of history and adventure, Davis asks not whether George Mallory was the first to reach the summit of Everest, but rather why he kept climbing on that fateful day.

‘An extraordinary book on an extraordinary generation’ Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void

‘An instant classic of mountaineering literature’ Guardian

A moving, epic masterpiece’ The Times