The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

Great nonfiction storytelling. Eye-opening and insightful. Written just a few years before the COVID pandemic, this book couldn’t have been more timely. Touches on the ever-prevalent occurrence of mass die-offs caused by disease. I found myself cringing and shuddering throughout. Well-written. Keeps ya hooked. The fact that it’s real makes it that much more intriguing. It’ll make you think deeply about just how fragile our civilization truly is. Recommended. This will occupy space in my mind for years to come.

The Lost City of the Monkey God was an extremely good book, it contained true stories of expeditions to the lost city, aka the white city in Honduras. Douglass Preston did a phenomenal job of providing detailed accounts of what happened on the expeditions and what happened after them. Preston writes about Theodore Morde and how he traveled up the Patuca river to find the “location” of the lost city. He did not actually find it due to later expeditions to the same area. The book speaks of the later expeditions as well how they tried to mine the tributaries for gold, the artifacts found and look for surviving temples like the Mayans had left. It was concluded the people of the lost city left in a rush due to extreme amounts of artifacts being found but never a city only mound, which the explorers believe was part of their architecture. I really loved how Preston steered off from the city and to the real danger that explorers faced. It took away the false Indiana Jones persona of archeology. The author talks about the diseases special to the Mosquitia jungle such as Leishmania braziliensis which the crew and author of the book caught while there. It was a little boring toward the middle of the book because I wasn’t sure if we were still looking at an expedition or not before it ended on a high note and then the next chapter was about the Mayans invading and expanding their empire. I loved the biology in this book and the way that Douglass Preston wrote it is extremely well. I was able to almost picture it perfectly in my head. When the author speaks on how Leishmania latches onto sand flies, and then how it enters your bloodstream by being engulfed by white blood cells because they are sent by your body to engulf the parasite and die. However Leishmania wants to be engulfed, it can't become an active internal parasite until your body does the only natural disease prevention. I also loved his description of the snake-decapitation on his trip in the Mosquitia jungle. Preston writes “As its head lashed back and forth, straining to sink its fangs into Woody’s fist, it expelled poison all over the back of his hand, causing his skin to bubble,”. I liked how he wrote about how the jaw unhinged to release the poison and its effect on commander Wood. This was after the first chapter where he laid out almost all the possible dangerous creatures special to the un-inhabited region, another thing I think helped get rid of the false Indiana Jones side of expeditions and archeology. Overall this was a great book and I look forward to reading the rest of it. I recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of a thriller with history to back

A DISCOURSE ON CHANGE The sun, lord of all, occupies the sky. Humans cannot share this space nor emulate this light. They are confined to the earth and consigned to the underworld, that realm of the nocturnal sun, upon their demise. And demise came on a massive scale --not dynastic disputes, or wars of expansion, or trade and tariff discussion, but panic, pestilence and devastation-- with the arrival of the Spaniards, who left entire populations depleted by measles and smallpox among many infectious diseases, to which they had no resistance. With this the local populations, surely those of the White City of Honduras, gathered their treasures and trophies, left a stash that seemed to them well hidden, and abandoned their cities, ignored their crops, departed their deities, and moved on. The cities they left behind concern our author, who has provided a splendid book, an orderly book, exhaustive, meticulous, broken down by topics, concerning a mysterious, still unidentified culture in the world's densest and most remote tropical forest, in Mosquitia, Honduras, Central America. This is a tale of adventure, technology, archaeology, pathology, which aroused more envy and meanness than delight in the professional community. A great read, serious without being overly technical, we travel to pristine nature surrounded by every kind of danger, including drug cartels, land depletion, deforestation, official corruption, tropical diseases and an appalling lack of resources for dealing with any and all the above inconveniences. One issue, however, persists. Our intrepid author insists on dividing the world into Old and New. These are outdated terms and very misleading. He also asks why European diseases decimated populations in the Americas, and not the other way around. Whoops! And syphilis? An American calling card to take home to Spain and Portugal. And yet mestizaje --cross-breeding-- not to be confused with rape, flourished, equally among Germans, French and Belgians, less so among the always racist British. Colonialism was a nasty business. As for diseases, commonly spread to human populations through contact with animals, a curious fact appears, in the paucity of domestic or "farmyard" animals in Mesoamerica, before the arrival of the Europeans. No cattle, no camillids, not even the noble Asian ass, that came to known as a burro. Men carried their own packs, made their way along paths they, themselves forged, and traded, indeed, but on a human scale. There was no animal large or strong enough to share their burden. And another misnomer: back in the seventies a mindless politician referred to the First (or “developed”) World, the second or Soviet world, and the backward or undeveloped, “Third” World. The second faded away, took another form, adopted another name, the first and third remain, while the terms are used constantly and mean nothing, since development, like underprivilege are spotty across the planet. The book is nonetheless riveting, not only for its detailing of the use of Lidar, a laser imaging, in archeological exploration, or the foraging for facts and presence of a “lost city” buried in an impenetrable jungle, or the questions raised regarding the origins and outcome of an unidentified and completely vanished people-- perhaps hiding in plain sight among the present-day population of Honduras--but actually Douglas Prescott's most relevant text is the statement on change. Life is an ever-shifting set of circumstances and their outcome. Survival requires adaptability and awareness. Even the most apparently “established societies”, as the 2016 election in the US revealed, can shift drastically, perhaps overnight. Change is the only constant in the universe.

Resultó mejor de lo que esperaba, la narración de los eventos es muy buena, mantiene el interés, el contenido es bastante interesante, pues toca diversos campos. Narra la historia de una expedición a una región poco explorada de Honduras en busca de una ciudad pérdida de una cultura vecina a la maya. La expedición ocurrió en el 2015, así que tal vez sea pronto para esperar conclusiones definitivas en este libro. Sin embargo, el autor tiene bastante material que ofrecer respecto a todo lo que ocurrió para que dicha expedición pudiera llevarse a cabo.

You never know what he's going to say, as it's the real experience of a real journey and not structured like a novel. I found it all fascinating and enjoyed the read tremendously, even though of course so much of it is sad, as is the destruction of our planet, but it's not dwelling on that nor hiding from it either. It's honest reporting and so interesting.

A real eye opener into Ancient Cultures and the impact that explorers had on them. Also extremely informative on the change and movement of pathogens on civilizations. Even though this is non fiction its a gripping read

Amazing story of discovery in the Honduran Jungle of a lost civilization from over 500 years ago written by a participant. Also a pertinent warning for the future that I am sure the author could not have seen coming just 3 years after publishing this in 2017.

Meticulous detail of the search and circumstances surrounding the expedition, and the aftermath. Exciting adventure story, even though not my usual taste in books.