Books like The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston


From the tales of Hernán Cortés to modern science, the legend of the White City—also called the Lost City of the Monkey God—has haunted the Honduran interior for centuries. Indigenous communities claim the city was a refuge for ancestors fleeing Spanish conquerors, warning that those who enter will become ill. In 1940, journalist Theodore Morde claimed to have discovered the city and returned with artifacts, but he never disclosed its location and later committed suicide. Three decades later, bestselling author Douglas Preston joined a scientific team to pursue the mystery. Using lidar, a cutting‑edge airborne scanning technology, Preston and his colleagues mapped the dense rainforest canopy during a 2012 flight. The data revealed a sprawling urban landscape, suggesting an undiscovered civilization. The team faced harsh jungle conditions—torrential rains, quicksand, disease‑laden insects, jaguars, and venomous snakes—while attempting to verify the discovery. Upon return, they contracted a fatal, incurable disease in the ruins, underscoring the perilous nature of the expedition.
First publish date: 2017
Genre: Travel & Geography/Travel Writing
Authors: Douglas Preston
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.4 (5 community ratings)

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

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Books similar to The Lost City of the Monkey God (14 similar books)

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📘 Lost Trails, Lost Cities

Memoir of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett’s early 20th‑century explorations and border surveying in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and the Amazon, offering firsthand accounts of the region’s decline during the rubber boom.

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The Mayan Secrets by 7202454|Clive Cussler book cover

📘 The Mayan Secrets

Fargo archaeologists uncover a towering Mayan manuscript in Mexico, revealing astonishing truths about the Maya, their cities, and humanity—propelling them into a perilous quest as powerful forces seek the secrets.

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📘 Ghosts of Everest

¿Fue realmente Edmund Hillary el primer hombre en llegar, en 1953, al techo del mundo? El reciente hallazgo del cadáver congelado del montañero británico George Leigh Mallory, desaparecido en 1924, ha arrojado muchas dudas al respecto. Con este hallazgo parece haberse resuelto uno de los mayores misterios de la historia del montañismo del siglo XX. Mallory, el montañero británico más experto de su época, y su compañero Irvine estaban a pocos metros de la cima y a corta distancia de convertirse en los primeros seres humanos en alcanzar el punto más alto del planeta, cuando desaparecieron en la niebla y entraron para siempre en la historia. El 1 de mayo de 1999, la Expedición de Investigación Mallory & Irvine encontró el cuerpo de Mallory —asombrosamente bien conservado— en la cara norte del Everest. *Los fantasmas del Everest* es el apasionante relato de los protagonistas de ese hallazgo y expone por primera vez lo que esas nuevas pruebas revelan acerca del último día de Mallory e Irvine. Este libro presenta la historia exclusiva de los hallazgos de la expedición de 1999 junto con un sorprendente análisis forense de las pruebas recientemtne descubiertas y las respuestas a la pregunta fundamental: ¿alcanzaron Mallory e Irvine la cumbre del Everest casi tres décadas antes que Hillary y Norgay? Ofrece además una apasionante reconstrucción, paso a paso, del ascenso de Mallroy e Irvine en 1924.

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The Bounty by 6803262|Caroline Alexander book cover

📘 The Bounty


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Between man and beast by 11099645|Monte Reel book cover

📘 Between man and beast
 by Monte Reel

A historical account of a 19th-century explorer who disproves the myth of the gorilla.

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Columbus by 8218286|Laurence Bergreen book cover

📘 Columbus

An epic historical adventure awaits. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous, but they revealed Columbus's uncanny sense of the sea, his mingled brilliance and delusion, and his superb navigational skills. In all these exploits he almost never lost a sailor. By their conclusion, however, Columbus was broken in body and spirit. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, the latter voyages illustrate the tragic costs -- political, moral, and economic. In rich detail Laurence Bergreen re-creates each of these adventures as well as the historical background of Columbus's celebrated, controversial career. - Publisher.

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Lost city of the Incas by 7042858|Hiram Bingham book cover

📘 Lost city of the Incas

**From Amazon.com:** In 1911 Hiram Bingham, a pre-historian with a love of exotic destinations, set out to Peru in search of the legendary city of Vilcabamba, capital city of the last Inca ruler, Manco Inca. With a combination of doggedness and good fortune he stumbled on the perfectly preserved ruins of Machu Picchu perched on a cloud-capped ledge 2000 feet above the torrent of the Urubamba River. The buildings were of white granite, exquisitely carved blocks each higher than a man. Bingham had not, as it turned out, found Vilcabamba, but he had nevertheless made an astonishing and memorable discovery, which he describes in his bestselling book LOST CITY OF THE INCAS.

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📘 Travels to discover the source of the Nile

Experiences of the Scottish explorer who rediscovered the source of the Nile on November 4, 1770.

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Castaways by 8532065|Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca book cover

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A first‑hand chronicle of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1528‑1536 expedition, detailing shipwreck, survival, and close encounters with Native American peoples across what is now Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

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Marvelous possessions by 11992246|Stephen Greenblatt book cover

📘 Marvelous possessions

This study examines the ways in which Europeans of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period represented non-European peoples and took possession of their lands, in particular the New World. In a series of readings of travel narratives, judicial documents and official documents, Greenblatt shows that "the experience of the marvellous", central to both art and philosophy, was yoked by Columbus and others to service of colonial appropriation. He argues that the traditional symbolic actions and legal rituals through which European sovereignty was asserted were strained to breaking point by the unprecedented nature of the discovery of the New World. But the book also shows that "the experience of the marvellous" is not necessarily an agent of empire: in writers as different as Herodotus, Jean de Lery and Montaigne - and notably in "Mandeville's Travels"--Wonder is the sign of a recognition of cultural difference. Greenblatt reaches back to the ancient Greeks and forward to the present to ask how it is possible, in a time of disorientation, hatred of the other and possesiveness, to keep the capacity for wonder from being poisoned.

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When the monkeys came back by 6679462|Kristine L. Franklin book cover

📘 When the monkeys came back

Marta remembers the monkeys that vanished from her Costa Rican valley when the trees were cut down. Growing up, she replant trees and sees the monkeys return.

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Monkey King by 11945039|Wu Cheng'en book cover

📘 Monkey King


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Some Other Similar Books

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
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