War stories don’t tend to make it to my reading list very often. But strong reviews for Mitchell Zuckoff’s Lost in Shangri-La (and one critic’s comparison of the book to Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, another gripping piece of non-fiction), led me to pick up this World War II story.
Late in the war, a United States military plane crashed in a remote part of New Guinea. Most of the passengers on the plane—military men and WACs on a sightseeing flight over a secluded, primitive valley—were killed immediately. But three passengers—an officer, an enlisted man, and a WAC—survived. The book tells the story of the incredible efforts to rescue the three survivors (two of whom were seriously injured) from a remote, inaccessible spot surrounded by natives who believed that the planes passing overhead were vehicles of the gods.
Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II is a wealth of information on some of the first women in the United States military, on planes and paratroopers, on a society previously untouched by modern technology. But it’s not a textbook—it’s an engrossing story that could easily be the subject of a major motion picture.
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