Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt: 

Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

Millard has done her research and has written a spellbinding tale of Roosevelt’s dangerous exploration of an uncharted river that feeds the Amazon.  It’s hard to imagine how the party could have been so ill prepared for this misadventure in the spring of 1914. More and more, I’m coming to appreciate history sideways through stories. Millard quickly sketches the context of Roosevelt’s political failure and of the US relationship with Latin America and she doesn’t stint on developing the characters of the expedition. This book is a treasure.