Margarita Lopez-Uribe

This book tells the story of an expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro to the Amazon looking for forests of cinnamon. Pizarro engaged into this expedition misled by the idea that tropical rainforests could actually hold single-species forests like the ones found in temperate regions. I read it when I was in graduate school and it led me to fantasize about the magic of the human cultures and biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest, one of my favorite places on the planet.