The Lost City of the Monkey God / Douglas Preston.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 The Gates of Hell (p. 1)
• 2 Somewhere in the Americas (p. 7)
• 3 The Devil Had Killed Him (p. 11)
• 4 A Land of Cruel Jungles (p. 20)
• 5 One of the Few Remaining Mysteries (p. 26)
• 6 The Heart of Darkness (p. 39)
• 7 The Fish That Swallowed the Whale (p. 52)
• 8 Lasers in the Jungle (p. 60)
• 9 Something That Nobody Had Done (p. 65)
• 10 The Most Dangerous Place on the Planet (p. 74)
• 11 Uncharted Territory (p. 88)
• 12 No Coincidences (p. 105)
• 13 Fer-de-Lance (p. 113)
• 14 Don't Pick the Flowers (p. 124)
• 15 Human Hands (p. 139)
• 16 I'm Going Down (p. 148)
• 17 A Bewitchment Place (p. 160)
• 18 Quagmire (p. 170)
• 19 Controversy (p. 182)
• 20 The Cave of the Glowing Skulls (p. 194)
• 21 The Symbol of Death (p. 211)
• 22 They Came to Wither the Flowers (p. 219)
• 23 White Leprosy (p. 233)
• 24 The National Institutes of Health (p. 249)
• 25 An Isolated Species (p. 259)
• 26 La Ciudad del Jaguar (p. 271)
• 27 We Became Orphans (p. 289)
• Acknowledgments (p. 303)
• Sources and Bibliography (p. 305)
• Index (p. 319)
• About the Author (p. 327)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

National Geographic and New Yorker writer and novelist Preston shares the story of his involvement in the search for a historic lost city in the rainforests of Honduras. Preston is one member of a team that managed to use a combination of historical research and state-of-the-art technology to examine the rainforests in the Mosquitia region, an area filled with all manner of dangers, from disease to drug traffickers. Preston's writing brings the reader along with the team as they discover 500-year-old artifacts, encounter huge and deadly snakes, and face the political and academic fallout the search brings with it. Listeners hear several interesting side stories, such as the discovery of historical fraud in their research and the battle half the team had with a deadly parasite picked up at the ruins. Preston's journalistic experience is on full display as he gives not only the viewpoint of those in the expedition but also those on the outside. Bill Mumy's reading is straightforward and engaging. The final disc includes 16 pages of photos. Verdict A great story with many paths to interest fans of history, archaeology, adventure, environmentalism, South America, or diseases.-Tristan M. Boyd, Austin, TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Mumy's lovely, low-key narrative style gives him ample scope to intensify the many magical, fearful, exciting, painful, intriguing, and panicky moments in this hair-raising adventure tale about the author's recent expedition to locate an ancient city in the Honduran mountains. Mumy's reads the first-person account with a great command of the language and story, giving listeners the impression that Preston is there directly relating his experiences deep in the magnificent but snake-infested wilderness. Mumy's vocal agility and conversational pacing make this captivating book a terrific listen. A Grand Central hardcover. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

For centuries a legend has been making the rounds in Central America about a monolithic lost Ciudad Blanca, or White City, hidden deep in the primeval rain forests of Honduras. So when Preston, a best-selling crime-fiction and nonfiction author and frequent National Geographic contributor, was given the opportunity to join an archaeological mission tasked with uncovering the truth behind these rumors, he knew it would yield a gripping true-life adventure story. Led by nature-documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins, the team included photographers, assorted experts on pre-Columbian ruins, and a trio of ex-military, jungle-warfare veterans. Buoyed by tantalizing findings from a Honduran flyover using cutting-edge and classified lidar mapping technology, Preston and company trekked deep into treacherous, virtually untouched, jungle-shrouded terrain to verify the stunning discovery of vast indigenous settlements abandoned over 500 years ago. 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.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2016 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

"Once again I had the strong feeling, when flying into the valley, that I was leaving the twenty-first century entirely": another perilous Preston (The Kraken Project, 2014, etc.) prestidigitation.The noted novelist and explorer is well-known for two things: going out and doing things that would get most people killed and turning up ways to get killed that might not have occurred to readers beforehand but will certainly be on their minds afterward. Here, the adventure involves finding a lost civilization in the heart of the Honduran rain forest, a steaming-jungle sort of place called La Mosquitia that saw the last gasps of a culture related, by ideas if not blood, to the classic Maya. That connection makes archaeological hearts go pitter-patter, and it sets archaeological blood to boiling when well-funded nonarchaeologists go in search of suchlike things, armed with advanced GPS and other technological advantages. Preston, who blends easily with all camps, braves the bad feelings of the professionals to chart out a well-told, easily digested history of the region, a place sacred to and overrun by jaguars, spider monkeys, and various other deities and tutelary spirits. Finding the great capital known, in the neutral parlance of the scholars, as T1 puts Preston and company square in various cross hairs, not least of them those of the Honduran army, whose soldiers, he divines, are on hand not to protect the place from looters but to do some looting themselves. "I've seen this kind of corruption all over the world," says one member of the expedition, "believe me, that's what's going to happen." Yes, but more than thatand the snakes and spiders and vengeful spiritsthere's the specter of a spectacularly awful, incurable disease called leishmaniasis, on the introduction of which Preston goes all Hot Zone and moves from intrepid explorer to alarmed epidemiologist. A story that moves from thrilling to sobering, fascinating to downright scarytrademark Preston, in other words, and another winner. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.