Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff

I wonder if you really need to write the book if you have a subtitle that long. I mean, it is fairly self-explanatory.

It's probably going to sound like I had a summer reading list focused on World War II (see A Covert Affair and The Soldier's Wife). I didn't do it on purpose, but they were interesting. I think I heard about Lost in Shangri-la on an NPR interview. The book followed two servicemen and a WAC who were the only survivors of a plane crash in the New Guinea interior near the end of World War II. The plane was on a sightseeing flight to see a hidden valley (dubbed Shangri-la by one of the first pilots to see it) as reward for their hard work and long hours. Zuckoff researched the background of both the victims and survivors and gave an in-depth portrait of their lives before, during and after the war. The crash survivors were incredibly lucky - not only did they survive the crash into the jungle mountainside when 21 of their compatriots did not - they also scavenged what they could from the wreckage, made it to a clearing where they were spotted and managed to take care of themselves until help arrived and a rescue plan was formulated.

At that time interior New Guinea was usually only accessible by air and even then, rarely. Hazards included the terrain, Japanese soldiers hiding in the mountains, lack of food and potable water and the unknown disposition of the native peoples. (They were rumored to be cannibals.) In addition to the historical research that the author did for the book, he also traveled to New Guinea and made his way to the village near the crash site. He interviewed some of the villagers who witnessed the crash and rescue, and the descendants of others who have since died. Zuckoff matched up what the survivors understood of the villagers' actions with what the villagers actually meant with their non-verbal communication. Anthropologically it's an eye-opening book. The Americans really didn't know how lucky they were. The rescue mission was a harrowing thrill - I can't imagine how it actually worked.