The Lost City of the Monkey God

In his most recent book, The Lost City of the Monkey God, Douglas Preston, a writer for National Geographic, tells the story of working with archaeologists and film makers to uncover the remains of a lost civilization deep in the jungles of Honduras. According to Preston, adventurers and explorers have been searching for the lost city for hundreds of years; however, no concrete evidence had been found up until the most recent expedition. Over the last couple of centuries, the tales and history of the lost city had merged with myths and legends becoming an integral part of indigenous Honduran culture. Preston begins the book by telling all about the history of archaeologists and explorers who searched for the lost city. He then proceeds to explain how he was invited to be a part of an expedition that used a sophisticated technology, lidar, to find and map the city by airplane. Lidar is a technology used and maintained by the US military to map areas from an airplane that are potentially dangerous or hard to get to. The location in which the group Preston works with finds the lost city is both dangerous and nearly impossible to get to by land. After using lidar to locate an area deep in the jungle that had clear signs of being used and manipulated by man hundreds of years ago, the team works with the Honduran military and other archaeology experts to fly into the jungle by helicopter, set up camp, explore the terrain and ruins on the ground, avoid being bitten or killed by the dangerous wildlife living in the area, and uncover the secretes left behind amidst the ruins of an unknown and lost civilization (Preston, 1-228).

I honestly really enjoyed reading The Lost City of the Monkey God. I found all of the history about the archaeological excavations of ancient Mesoamerican societies fascinating, and I feel that I learned some valuable information about ancient Mayan and Aztecan cultures. One of the most interesting sections of the book, in my opinion, explains the spread of diseases from the Old World to the New World. Since the author and his archaeological team all contracted a deadly disease while working in the jungle, the author includes an in depth history of this disease, leishmaniasis, and other diseases that devastated the ancient Mesoamerican peoples. While I did enjoy the book overall, I do feel that certain parts of the book did drag on a bit. The last 100 pages of the book really focuses on the disease and the treatment that the author and his coworkers had to got through, and I felt that this took away somewhat from the focus on the expedition and its findings. Parts of this section were also a bit cringey. However, the author was able to effectively tie in his experience with this disease with the society and history of the ancient people they were studying. One of the things I enjoyed most about reading this book is that I did not read the book alone. I recently started a book club with some of my best friends, and this was the first book that we decided to read together. We are reading one book a month and are meeting up each month to have dinner, enjoy one another's company, and discuss our thoughts and opinions on the books we select.