The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire
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The amazing tale of one of history's most daring acts of biopiracy-and how it changed historyIn this thrilling real-life account of bravery, greed, obsession, and ultimate betrayal, award- winning writer Joe Jackson brings to life the story of fortune hunter Henry Wickham and his collaboration with the empire that fueled, then abandoned him. In 1876, Wickham smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of the rainforests of Brazil and delivered them to Victorian England's most prestigious scientists at Kew Gardens. The story of how Wickham got his hands on those seeds-and the history-making consequences-is the stuff of legend. The Thief at the End of the World is an exciting true story of reckless courage and ambition that perfectly captures the essential nature of Great Britain's colonial adventure in South America. The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley Jackson has made a first-rate book out of Wickham's story. A freelance writer and former newspaper reporter who works out of Virginia Beach, he has done a heroic amount of research, made a coherent story out of a huge mass of material and identified the larger themes that give the story its resonance. His writing is lucid, occasionally vivid, and he brings to the enterprise a welcome sense of humor, as well as, when it is useful, a sense of the ridiculous. The Thief at the End of the World not merely is informative and instructive, it also is immensely entertaining, an attribute always to be welcomed.
Prologue: Henry's Dream 1Part I The Need1 The Fortunate Son 192 Nature Belongs to Man 343 The New World 534 The Mortal River 755 Instruments of the Elastic God 100Part II The Source6 The Return of the Planter 1197 The Jungle 1368 The Seeds 1539 The Voyage of the Amazonas 173Part III The World10 The Edge of the World 19711 The Talking Cross 21712 Rubber Madness 23713 The Vindicated Man 263Epilogue: The Monument of Need 291AppendicesI World Rubber Production, 1905-1922 305II The World's Rubber Requirements, 1922 306III New York Price Quotations for Crude Rubber 307Glossary 309Notes 313Bibliography 363Acknowledgments 391Index 397
