The Lost City of the Monkey God : a true story / Douglas Preston.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781455540013 (trade paperback) :
- Physical Description: viii, 326 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly colour), maps ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2017.
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Search for related items by subject
Genre: | Travel > Honduran Rainforest |
Available copies
- 6 of 7 copies available at Sitka.
- 1 of 1 copy available at Hudson's Hope Public Library. (Show preferred library)
Holds
- 0 current holds with 0 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hudson's Hope Public Library | ANF 972.85 PRE (Text) | BHH044701 | Adult Non-fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
Galiano Island Community Library | NF 972.85 PRE (Text) | 33127000156937 | Non fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
Hazelton Public Library | 972.85 Pre (Text) | 35154000127849 | Adult Non-Fiction - Main Floor | Volume hold | Available | - |
Nelson Public Library | 972.85 PRE (Text) | 35148002000954 | Adult Non-Fiction | Volume hold | Checked out | 2024-04-18 |
Arborg Branch | 972.85 PRE (Text) | 36430001277547 | Non-Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
Horsefly Branch | 972.85 PRE (Text) | 33923005932086 | Non-fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
Stelly's Secondary School | 972.83 PRE (Text) | 21050000724252 | Non-fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2016 December #1
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. Copyright 2016 Booklist Reviews. - BookPage Reviews : BookPage Reviews 2017 January
A true-life adventure worthy of Indiana JonesLet author Douglas Preston give testimony to the old adage: Truth is stranger than fiction. As the co--author, with Lincoln Child, of a series of bestselling suspense novels, Preston has explored mysteries involving sorcery, witchcraft and ancient secrets. Now he chronicles his own true-life adventures in a nonfiction book, The Lost City of the Monkey God.
Preston's quest is to find the ruins of an ancient city in the mountains of Honduras, known as the "White City" or the "Lost City of the Monkey God." Others have embarked on similar expeditions only to fail, most notably an adventurer who returned in 1940 with spectacular artifacts, but committed suicide before revealing the location of his discovery.
This time, Preston and his team are armed with sophisticated equipment, borrowed from NASA, that allows them to peer beneath the jungle growth to map the contours below. From the air, they detect the outlines of a long-lost civilization. But space-age technology is of no aid once they land and face the perils of the rainforest, including poisonous snakes, vicious jaguars and vengeful drug dealers. Ironically, their greatest danger occurs on their return home, when they are beset with an incurable illness contracted from a parasite. Is this affliction of "white leprosy" a mere coincidence, or a curse?
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.
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This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Copyright 2017 BookPage Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2016 November #1
"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 thatâand the snakes and spiders and vengeful spiritsâthere'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 scaryâtrademark Preston, in other words, and another winner. Copyright Kirkus 2016 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - PW Annex Reviews : Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews
Novelist Preston's irresistibly gripping account of his experiences as part of the expedition to locate an ancient city in the Honduran mountains reads like a fairy tale minus the myth. "There was once a great city in the mountains," he writes, "struck down by a series of catastrophes, after which the people decided the gods were angry and left, leaving their possessions. Thereafter it was shunned as a cursed place, forbidden, visiting death on those who dared enter." In 2012, Preston was present as the expedition team attempted to use light detection and ranging technology to identify the city's location in the uncharted wildernesses of Honduras; they " billions of laser beams into a jungle that no human beings had entered for perhaps five hundred years." The effort succeeded in locating two large sites, apparently built by the civilization that once inhabited the Mosquiteria region. The discovery led to a return trip in 2015 to explore the sites on foot, a physically and emotionally draining experience that resulted in remarkable archeological finds, specifically a cache of stone sculptures. Preston, author of
Copyright 2017 Publisher Weekly Annex.The Monster of Florence and co-author with Lincoln Child of the bestselling thriller series featuring FBI agent Pendergast, brings readers into the field while enriching the narrative with historical context, beginning with 16th-century rumors of the city's existence reported by explorer Hernán Cortés after his conquest of Mexico. Along the way, Preston explains the legendary abandonment of the City of the Monkey God and provides scientific reasoning behind its reputation as life-threatening. Admirers of David Grann'sThe Lost City of Z will find their thirst for armchair jungle adventuring quenched here.(Jan.)