In Search of Great Narrative

As he fought to gain purchase on the rain-greased log bridging a ravine, Mitchell Zuckoff tried not to think about the jagged rocks 15 feet below. He’d find out later that his guide for the trek through New Guinea’s isolated Shangri-La valley had a local pilot on standby in case they needed an emergency evacuation.

Zuckoff recounted the extraordinary rescue in his book, Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (HarperCollins Publishers, 2011). He’d been an investigative reporter for the Boston Globe for two decades, published in magazines like the New Yorker and Fortune, and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize—but Lost in Shangri-La turned Zuckoff from a successful author into a New York Times–bestselling one.

Read the full story in COMTalk.