Jonathan Maslow here portrays thirteen scientists whom he calls "the luckiest men and women of all time"--the explorers who first mapped the tropical regions of the Americas and discovered the glorious biological orgy that is nature in the tropics. They were the first to color the chorus of tropical birds; the first to know the swiftness of the jaguar; the first to learn the loves of the orchid family and to collect the daunting variety of moths and...