Amazon Journal: 0dispatches from a Vanishing Frontier

O'Connor believes that the cultures of the Indian tribes in the Amazon rain forests are so different from those of the ""civilized"" world that mutual efforts of tribes and outsiders to understand one another are nearly impossible. That conclusion is amply supported in this engrossing account of his experiences over a seven-year period while making a documentary film in the region. His book encapsulates stories of land desecration; pollution of the waters and air by thousands of gold miners who have moved in; and land grabs in exchange for television sets and bottles of Coca Cola. Also recounted here are political corruption, errors of environmentalists, decimation of indigenous populations by imported diseases, stripping of valuable trees by loggers--all of it played out against the constant whirring of helicopters over otherwise inaccessible jungle. Nominated for an Academy Award for his 1993 documentary, At the Edge of Conquest, O'Connor has written a riveting description of a cross-section of all the varieties of interlopers and natives in the Amazon. (Sept.)