Amazon

This luxe book of photography traces National Geographic explorer Thomas Peschak's unprecedented expedition across the Amazon from source to the sea, revealing the incredible secrets of this vital waterway. For decades, the rainforests that blanket South America have  overshadowed the world's greatest river: the Amazon. A web of more than 1,000 streams and tributaries collectively spawning an enormous water world larger than the continental United States, it is home to thousands of species of fish, aquatic reptiles, mammals, and birds-most found nowhere else on Earth. In these dazzling pages, acclaimed photographer Thomas Peschak reveals for the first time the astonishing worlds nestled between the Andes Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Loosely following the flow of the river from 17,000 feet to the mouth 4,000 miles downstream, he captures astonishing biodiversity, novel wildlife behavior and unique ecologies of rarely glimpsed species.   Equal parts photojournalism and art, this lavish book will take readers on a breathtaking visual journey to one of the wildest places left on the planet.