I have never wanted the main characters of a book to fail as much as I did with The Beast in the Clouds by Nathalia Holt. You see, this book follows the journey of Teddy Roosevelt's sons as they hunt the elusive...(checks notes)...panda?! Yes, the friendly, sweet, and docile panda bear. Literally the nicest type of bear (yes, even according to science and not just my personal feelings). Did you know that there is no documented evidence of a panda killing a human? However, based on how we have treated pandas, maybe they should be more like polar bears who just love killing humans. I digress!

Holt tells a very lean story unlike the subject of the book (panda zinger for you). I love adventure books, but for some readers, they find the beginning of these books to be a bit tedious with their stories of how the expeditions come together and the minutiae of the planning. I love that stuff, but I get it. Holt wastes no time. The book opens with the players already on the trail and it never slows down. I hesitate to reveal too much. This book can be more in the vein of Heart of Darkness than a traditional story of an arduous scientific expedition. I very much enjoyed not knowing where Holt was going with the characters and I'll leave it at that.

This is one of those narratives that will stick with you once it's over. It is succinct for a history book, but it is not short on impact at all. A must read.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Atria Books.)

This turned out to be quite fascinating on multiple different levels. First and foremost is the general plot itself - the sons of Theodore Roosevelt going off on an expedition into Western China to find evidence of the giant panda in an era where that animal’s very existence was in doubt by many. That sentence sounds like too much to be true at first glance, but it was in fact a real event, and here it is being brought to our attention in detail.

However, author Nathalia Holt however very successfully takes things several further from there. The narrative goes on numerous little detours to go into a little more depth on a far-spanning range of related topics, including flora and fauna of the Himalayas and little bits of culture and history of the various peoples living in the corner of the globe that the Roosevelt brothers trekked about in. And each one of said little detours not only proved to be quite interesting in their own right, but several times my curiosity was so piqued that I paused my reading to look up a little more about them.

Also, from the very start of the book the brothers Kermit and Theodore Jr. (referred to as Ted by Holt), are treated like anything but bold explorers going out on an adventure with nothing but their own brit and determination. Instead, they’re treated as the complex human beings they are, complete with their own personal flaws and struggles (including trying to live in the massive shadow cast by their father). As part of this, the fact that they did not complete this expedition in a vacuum is emphasized from the get-go, and Holt spends a great deal of time paying attention and highlighting the work of all those women and men who made the Roosevelts journey possible. In other words - the approach taken to the brothers is anything but hagiographic, and all the care taken to include all of the detailed realities of the lives of these men and those in their orbit frankly made for far more interesting reading than the alternative.

Combine all the aforementioned with the heavy themes of conservation threaded through the whole book, and the end result is a informatively juicy nonfiction read - and one that will go by far quicker than one may expect. Or at least, such was my own personal case, writing as someone who found it hard to put down “The Beast in the Clouds” for very long.

This book could almost be seen as a sequel to Candace Millard's "River of Doubt". Told in the same thrilling narrative while deeply researched and having the perspective to focus both on the venture to find the panda but also the after effects. Ms. Holt does an excellent job of making us feel like we are on the trail with Ted and Kermit and their entry into the border of China and Tibet. Humanizing and carefully written, this book is a triumph of adventure storytelling that also focuses on the present and future of the people and animals the expedition came into contact with.