White Gold: The Diary of a Rubber Cutter in the Amazon 1896–1906 is a tale of humanity and the natural order working together in the midst of greed and ignorance. The crisis of the Amazon rainforest began more than a century ago when prospectors discovered the region was a rich source for rubber. This brought commercial interests into collision with the Amazon’s complex ecology — its plants, animals, and people. At the height of the rubber boom, a young American, John Yungjohann, went to seek his fortune as a rubber cutter in Brazil, only to find himself struggling for survival.
Editor Sir Ghillean Prance — leading expert of the rainforest and former director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew — has enhanced Yungjohann’s text with contemporary photographs and identified the fungi, plants and animals mentioned in the diary. Yungjohann’s words are especially poignant today as extractivist policies continue to threaten the Amazon and its incomprehensible biodiversity.
“White Gold — like the Colombian classic La Voragine — sets forth the depravity of ruthless men who stop at nothing to exploit their fellows, heedless of their sufferings and deaths in the unfamiliar jungle environment.” — Dr. Richard Evans Schultes
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Why this book matters
- A firsthand diary from the Amazon rubber boom of 1896–1906 — one of the earliest and most vivid accounts of extractivist destruction in the rainforest
- Edited by Sir Ghillean Prance, former director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, with photographs and scientific identifications that bring the diary to life
- Praised by Dr. Richard Evans Schultes as a companion to the great Colombian classic La Voragine — a literary and ecological landmark
- Yungjohann’s words feel more urgent than ever as the same life-and-death dramas continue to play out across the Amazon today
- Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deep historical roots of the Amazon’s ongoing ecological crisis
