The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

by Douglas Preston
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

by Douglas Preston

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781455540013
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication date: 09/05/2017
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 38,582
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Place of Birth:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Education:

B.A., Pomona College, 1978

Table of Contents

1 The Gates of Hell 1

2 Somewhere in the Americas 7

3 The Devil Had Killed Him 11

4 A Land of Cruel Jungles 20

5 One of the Few Remaining Mysteries 26

6 The Heart of Darkness 39

7 The Fish That Swallowed the Whale 52

8 Lasers in the Jungle 60

9 Something That Nobody Had Done 65

10 The Most Dangerous Place on the Planet 74

11 Uncharted Territory 88

12 No Coincidences 105

13 Fer-de-Lance 113

14 Don't Pick the Flowers 124

15 Human Hands 139

16 I'm Going Down 148

17 A Bewitchment Place 160

18 Quagmire 170

19 Controversy 182

20 The Cave of the Glowing Skulls 194

21 The Symbol of Death 211

22 They Came to Wither the Flowers 219

23 White Leprosy 233

24 The National Institutes of Health 249

25 An Isolated Species 259

26 La Ciudad del Jaguar 271

27 We Became Orphans 289

Acknowledgments 303

Sources and Bibliography 305

Index 319

About the Author 327

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