Lost in Shangri-La
Popular History Accessible Primary Sources
🇺🇸 American
A sightseeing flight crashes in an uncharted New Guinea valley; three survivors meet a stone-age people, and gliders come to get them out.
The Verdict
Of all the war's true stories, few are stranger than this one. In 1945 a transport plane on a sightseeing flight crashed deep in an uncharted valley of New Guinea, and its handful of survivors — badly injured, one of them a WAC corporal — found themselves among a people who had never seen the outside world, while the army improvised a rescue by glider. Mitchell Zuckoff reconstructs the whole improbable episode from the survivors' diaries and, remarkably, the valley people's own memories of the visitors from the sky. Adventure, anthropology, and rescue, all true.
Who Should Read It
Read it if you want
- A genuinely strange true survival story
- First contact in a hidden New Guinea valley
- An improvised glider rescue
- Adventure grounded in real records
Look elsewhere if you want
- A conventional combat narrative
- The strategic Pacific war
- A sombre tone
Why We Rated It 4.2
Historical Context
Lost in Shangri-La (2011) reconstructs the May 1945 crash of a US military transport in a remote valley of Dutch New Guinea, the survival of three passengers among an isolated indigenous people, and their eventual rescue by glider. Zuckoff drew on survivors' diaries and interviews, including with the valley's inhabitants.
Events Covered
Read It Alongside
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Popular History Where to Buy
ISBN: 978-0061988356
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Lost in Shangri-La a true story?
- Yes — it reconstructs a real 1945 plane crash and rescue in a remote New Guinea valley from diaries and interviews.
- How were the survivors rescued?
- By glider — aircraft could not land in the valley, so a glider was flown in and then snatched back into the air, an audacious operation the book details.