The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story book cover

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

Paperback – Illustrated, September 5, 2017

by
Price
$9.40
Format
Paperback
Pages
336
Publisher
Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1455540013
Dimensions
5.25 x 1 x 8 inches
Weight
10.4 ounces

Description

"Preston builds a compelling case for the scientific significance of what the expedition unearthed....The year may still be young, but I would wager a small fortune that Douglas Preston has already written the best snake-decapitation scene of 2017....The book's most affecting moments [center] on the otherworldly nature of the jungle itself....Memoirs of jungle adventures too often devolve into lurid catalogs of hardships [but] Preston proves too thoughtful an observer and too skilled a storyteller to settle for churning out danger porn. He has instead created something nuanced and sublime: a warm and geeky paean to the revelatory power of archaeology....Few other writers possess such heartfelt appreciation for the ways in which artifacts can yield the stories of who we are."― The New York Times Book Review "A well-documented and engaging read...The author's narrative is rife with jungle derring-do and the myriad dangers of the chase."― USA Today "Deadly snakes, flesh-eating parasites, and some of the most forbidding jungle terrain on earth were not enough to deter Douglas Preston from a great story."― The Boston Globe "Breezy, colloquial and sometimes very funny...A very entertaining book."― The Wall Street Journal "This modern-day archeological adventure and medical mystery reads as rapidly as a well-paced novel, but is a heart-pounding true story."― Shelf Awareness, Starred Review "A captivating real-life adventure tale... Preston deftly explains the science behind this work and makes it exciting."― Science News "Be prepared to turn the pages furiously as the heart of every adventurer is opened wide by the thrilling journey outlined in THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD."― The Bookreporter "A swift and often hair-raising account... Preston pushes "The Lost City of the Monkey God" well beyond the standard adventure narrative."― The Chicago Tribune "Packed with the power of realism and history unfolding."― The Star Ledger "Admirers of David Grann's The Lost City of Z will find their thirst for armchair jungle adventuring quenched here... Irresistibly gripping."― Publishers Weekly, starred review "This nonfiction thriller about plunging into the interior of the Honduran jungle is actually true and a perfect read for armchair travelers or would-be adventurers who bemoan the fact that there's nothing left to discover...Douglas Preston's true-life tale includes everything from the latest technology to ancient curses to scientific backbiting and a mysterious illness that came out of the jungle and is headed your way."― The Huffington Post "Let author Douglas Preston give testimony to the old adage: Truth is stranger than fiction... The Lost City of the Monkey God is more than just an adventure story. It examines such modern issues as the ethics of archeological expeditions, man's destruction of the rainforest and the incessant creep of technology and its effects on indigenous peoples. Readers will find themselves both shocked and captivated by this account of mysteries old and new."― Bookpage "The Lost City of the Monkey God is a superior example of narrative nonfiction, an exciting, immersive tale of modern science and ancient mythology. Preston captures the complexity of his subject without bogging down in the details, presenting scenes with clarity, purposefulness and wit. It's a great story for a snowy day, an action-packed journey into a hot zone of scientific intrigue."― The Portland Press Herald "A story that moves from thrilling to sobering, fascinating to downright scary--trademark Preston, in other words, and another winner."― Kirkus, starred review "Replete with informative archaeology lessons and colorful anecdotes about the challenges Elkins' crew faced during the expedition, including torrential rains and encounters with deadly snakes, Preston's uncommon travelogue is as captivating as any of his more fanciful fictional thrillers."― Booklist "Best-selling journalist and thriller author Douglas Preston stars in his own true-story page-turner about the discovery of a lost city deep in the Honduran jungle...giving readers an Indiana Jones style adventure that's history, not Hollywood."― Virtuoso Life "For anyone who dreams of lost times and places--and who doesn't?--this is the book. Revelatory, chilling, creepy, and alive with deadly snakes and insects bearing incurable disease, it's high adventure at its best, and all true."― Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City "What reader could resist a new book by Douglas Preston called THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD? Not this reader. Preston's book offers rewards for both the mystery fan and the nonfiction aficionado. THE LOST CITY is addictive-fast-paced and riveting, but it's also important. We mustn't repeat the cataclysmic mistakes of the past. Ironically-as THE LOST CITY illustrates-that's exactly what our short-sighted civilization is doing right now."― James Patterson "If you're going to explore a lost city-in this case one that vultures, poisonous snakes, sand flies, and mudholes have protected for 500 years-you really only want to do it with Douglas Preston. A tale of bravado, chicanery, and impossible dreams, arresting at every turn, no less so in its unexpected, pulse-racing coda."― Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Witches: Salem, 1692, and Cleopatra: A Life "Douglas Preston, at great risk to his own life, has produced a thrilling and powerful adventure story. Not only does he leave the reader fitfully turning the pages, he sheds an important light on what the Americas looked like before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and on the fragility of our own civilization."― David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of Z "Douglas Preston is one of the most adventurous figures in American letters today. Inured to personal danger, braving venomous snakes and lethal pathogens, he somehow gets it all--the science, the history, the intrigues, the obsessive characters, the electric moment of discovery, and the haunted cries of a once-powerful civilization. Preston's marvelous story is made all the more potent by the astonishing fact that, from beginning to end, it happens to be true."― Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of In the Kingdom of Ice "A great true adventure, filled with danger, close calls, better-than-Hollywood characters, and a lost world that reaches through time and into everyone's future. One of the best nonfiction books I've read."― Robert Kurson, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow Divers and Pirate Hunters "The Lost City of the Monkey God is a throwback to the golden age of adventure archaeology, the thrilling true story of a group of explorers penetrating one of the toughest jungles on earth in search of a lost city...and finding it. Preston is a terrific writer of both non-fiction books and bestselling novels, and makes you feel the dark heart of this lost Honduran wilderness."― John Sandford, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Prey series of novels "One of the best reads so far this year."― The Sacramento Bee #11 on Amazon's Best 100 Books of The Year List! ― Amazon One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2017 in Fiction! ― Publishers Weekly One of Shelf Awareness 's Best Books of the Year ― Shelf Awareness Included in The Texas Library Association's Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List for 2017― TLA NAMED A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 #1 New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller! A Best Book of 2017 from the Boston Globe One of the 12 Best Books of the Year from National Geographic Included in Lithub 's Ultimate Best Books of 2017 List A Favorite Science Book of 2017 from Science News DOUGLAS PRESTON worked as a writer and editor for the American Museum of Natural History and taught writing at Princeton University. He has written for The New Yorker , Natural History , National Geographic , Harper's , Smithsonian , and The Atlantic . The author of several acclaimed nonfiction books--including the bestseller The Monster of Florence --Preston is also the co-author with Lincoln Child of the bestselling series of novels featuring FBI agent Pendergast.

Features & Highlights

  • The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery.
  • Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease.Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(5.1K)
★★★★
25%
(4.2K)
★★★
15%
(2.5K)
★★
7%
(1.2K)
★
23%
(3.9K)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

THE NITTY GRITTY OF A REAL LIFE EXPEDITION INTO THE HONDURAN RAINFOREST...

If you are looking for an Indiana Jones type of adventure story, this is not the book for you. If you want a thoughtful, detailed account of a real expedition into the Honduran rainforest and the travails, roadblocks, and unexpected consequences encountered by that expedition, then this book would be of interest. Archaeology is a painstaking, thoughtful process, which the book makes clear. Using the latest technology, the expedition endeavors to find the fabled lost City of the Monkey God, also known as the White City, purported to exist in the Honduran rainforest. What they discovered was evidence of not just a city but of a complex, ancient civilization.

The author details their use of technology on the expedition, the discovery to which it led, the cache of artifacts discovered, and what they experienced during their sojourn in the rainforest. The book details various political squabbles and jealousy in academic circles that reflect quite poorly on certain, otherwise respected, academicians. The contraction by expedition members of a disease that affected various participants of the expedition in different ways is thoughtfully presented, giving a thorough explanation in the context of its historical underpinnings. It also gives an intriguing explanation on the migration of disease in the context of climate change.

This is a well-written, three dimensional account of a real-life expedition into the Honduran rainforest that was successful on many fronts, giving a revelatory description on the family of man.
17 people found this helpful
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Adventure in exploring and medicine, not for the faint of heart.

(Spoilers?) Really two books, both highly personal to the author. #1 is what is promoted. the intricate and often frustrating search for a "lost city" in toxic physically taxing wilderness. Preston persists despite many warnings about catching fatal disease. OF COURSE he (and everybody else there) emerges with deadly disease(s). #2 is a horrifying search for a cure to Preston's jungle affliction. It is fatal. Through more struggling and pain, fortunately he persists through medical jungles . Yes, he becomes cured, for which we all have been prepared and are grateful. (No book otherwise!) Both induce general tension upon reading, wondering why fate and bureaucracy are conspiring against him. A couple of pages were misprinted in my copy.
7 people found this helpful
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Cliches, tropes, and a whole lotta fiction trotted as truth

My first question is, what were people smoking who gave this a good review? I am a wildlife biologist who has lived and explored some of the most remote tropical habitats in northern South America and Central America. I have even been funded by Nat Geo, so am stunned at their kudos for this birdcage liner.

I read the reviews and thought oh wonderful, finally, here is a book that does these habitats and wildlife and indigenous peoples justice. I had been desperately searching for a writer who shows how interesting and spectacular these places are without the need to sensationalize, exaggerate, or fill a tome with a mountain of cliches like so many of these books do. Hoo boy was I wrong.

In Chapter one I lost count of the cliches within 15 minutes, and could hardly keep reading after I read about the "jumping" vipers and red ants that "pour down on you" from the trees (apparently a lot of jungle wildlife have evolved to jump on the people from the trees - for reasons unknown - despite this region not having encountered humans in 500 years so says the author) and how the men all wore gloves because, well, eek jungles are prickly. And of course there is the Sergeant Major with a cliched nickname who quips things like "my sole job is to keep you alive!" and to tell the men they can get lost if the wander just "10 to 15 feet away". Why, are they mute? Can't they yell "hey guys over here?" As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

The problem here is that he has already demonstrated a penchant to take a nugget of truth and wrap it in cliches, dime novel adjectives, and outright BS that now I can't believe or trust in anything he says for the rest of the book, no matter how good his research MAY be for other parts. Which means I am now reading fiction. And, as far as enjoyable, skilled, unique or enticing fiction goes there are hundreds of works of fiction I'd rather read than bushwhack my way through Mr. Preston's "mosquito infested" diatribe of poodles jumping through flaming hoops.

I should add I studied predators like snakes and jaguars, and this guy's accounts of the wildlife would be hilarious if they didn't do an injustice to Mother Nature, which is amazing, scary, profound, and beautiful without having to be sensationalized. Like so many he felt the need to make the awe-inspiring and beautiful biodiversity these places have to offer and reduce it to Heart of Darkness horror only (yes, he actually named a chapter that, where is my eye rolling emoji). I really wanted this book to at the very least be an enjoyable read. I can say I am more inspired than ever to finish my book about my adventures, that is if I can survive the harrowing and dangerous travails that await me between journey from my desk to the kitchen as I go refill my coffee cup. Let's hope no jumping assassin death vipers with machete sized teeth are waiting in the shadows of my cupboard.
3 people found this helpful
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... being in the elements of the jungle and a boring read.

It is more about the history than it is about being in the elements of the jungle and a boring read.
3 people found this helpful
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Stay on topic

In my humble opinion Douglas Preston does a fair job of staying on the topic of "The Lost City of the Monkey God". But somehow the expedition to what was also known as the White City captures only a piece of the narrative. The bulk of of the book involves topics such as the history of Central America, the annihilation of native Americans due to imported European diseases, the dangers of the rain forest , the deadliest of snakes the fer-de-lance, and the horrific flesh eating disease. He concludes the book not with some predictions of the future significance of the Lost City, but with a dire warning of the spread of the sand fly whose bite leaves you with almost certain death. The migration of this virulent bug is the result of climate change. We will have to deal with this pandemic through out the United States. This is a decent book which is intensely interesting but not in the way I expected. There's much more than the Lost City.
2 people found this helpful
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Shameless ripoff of The Lost Of Z.

The cover, the title, the location... Does Douglas Preston have any self-respect as an author?
2 people found this helpful
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Archaeological PC tripe

I have a fair collection of historical exploration books and was waiting to read more about the lidar discoveries in South America, so this caught my eye. It's started out Ok, but the discovery was anti-climactic, and then it just descended into politically correct crap.

The author goes into the usual European genocide of the natives, global freakin warming, how several modern archaeologists, including Rosemary Joyce of Berkeley (surprise!) called the discovery, "...rhetorical elements that represents antiquated and offensive, ethnocentric attitudes...that are at odds with anthropology's substantial efforts at inclusion and multivocality." PAH-LEEZ...

I just wanted a good exploration adventure story, Ok? Not - "...a throwback to the bad old colonialist, Indiana Jones days of archaeology." Actual quote. Oh, and apparently the sites are almost always looted by the "indigenous" peoples.

I haven't read a lot of exploration books about the Americas, but I'd like to. I did read "The Lost City of Z", tho, and that was entertaining.

If you want a depressingly politically correct modern case study in archaeology - then THIS is yer book.
2 people found this helpful
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Seriouly lacking for armchair archeology buffs

If the reader is obsessed with learning about the tropical disease 'Leishamniasis' this book is a springboard for that. As for the actual adventure of rediscovering The Lost City of the Monkey God, aka White City, it's a skiperoo as only a tiny faction of the text covers information eluded by in the book's title.
1 people found this helpful
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Exciting and educational

I found this not only a great read but an educational deep dive into the endless list of details that have to covered before you slide on your backpack and trudge into the jungle in search of an archeological gold mine. Just discovering a potential site from the air takes meticulous planning, hacking your way through governmental redtape (which can take years), access to the latest imaging technology and a crackerjack team with years of experience - and of course - major financial backing. All of this before you take your first step on the ground. Then the real adventure begins. Preston takes us on a rollercoaster ride through a dense rainforest fraught with peril coming at you in every direction including snakes that can bite through leather boots. You will come away believing truth is better than fiction.
1 people found this helpful
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This was really a great book. It reads like a Michael Crichton book ...

This was really a great book. It reads like a Michael Crichton book but is a true story which makes it even better as you learn along the way. Throughout the book, there are interesting side stories that keep you wanting to read more. The bit about Sam Zemmurray, the banana man, has me reading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King to learn more, the descriptions of LIDAR have me wanting to find any way I can to invest in this old but underutilized technology, and the scenery descriptions have me seriously considering Honduras as my next out-of-country vacation spot. It's a diverse story with some history, some science, and interesting narratives thrown in.
1 people found this helpful

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