The Book Keep

Title: The Lost City of the Monkey God
Author: Douglas Preston
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Year: 2017
Pages: 302

Cover design & photograph by: Flag & Douglas Preston
(via goodreads)

Summary

Following in the footsteps of those who had attempted to discover it in the past, Douglas Preston, a writer for National Geographic, joins a team of archeologists, anthropologists, and filmmakers on a groundbreaking expedition to discover the legendary La Ciudad Blanca (“White City”) in the heart of the Honduran rainforest. Possibly the only and last untouched ancient ruins in the world today, the White City reveals not only a missing piece in the study of Central American civilizations but also insight into our own trajectory in the course of human history.

Review

Tales of adventure are often susceptible to unrealistically perilous moments, the dramatic revelation of glittering treasure, and the romanticization of the “discoverer.” In The Lost City, however, Douglas Preston presents a modern, layman’s view of archeology that is respectful, unembellished, and richly informative while yet sustaining as much suspense as any fictional creation.

To be most appreciated in Preston’s account of La Ciudad Blanca is his ability to dive deep into nuanced topics without compromising on accessibility. Filtering the event under anthropological, archeological, historical, cultural, and epidemiological lenses, Preston proves a careful eye in selecting the details that are most important for the reader’s sincere engagement with every relevant fact and implication of the expedition. Moreover, he layers these core considerations to great effect: first, we are informed of the general context of an incident so that in then encountering its specific description, we may better understand its meaning and, ultimately, Preston’s discussion of its import.

What most enables the success of this accessibility, though, is the author’s writing style. With the hallmark characteristics of a journalist, Preston’s narration is clear, straightforward, and easy to follow. He further uses pull-quotes as chapter titles, which creates intrigue to continue reading as well as thematic focal points for each chapter. He does deviate at times with more poetic imagery and the occasional wryly humorous remark. But while the latter feels natural to Preston’s established voice, the former seems to emerge rather abruptly amid the overall documentary tone.

For, indeed, The Lost City’s honest, realistic documentation of the team’s journey to finding La Ciudad Blanca is the book’s most powerful quality. Preston not only frames the meaning and impact of the expedition in a respectful way; he also offers a fair presentation of the controversies and ethical dilemmas surrounding it. He allows space to understand the critics’ reasoning, but based on his own experiences and research, he still holds firm to his own beliefs. In this, Preston provokes objective discourse, encouraging the reader, too, to think seriously about such nuanced issues.

The final, though perhaps less divisive, topic that The Lost City explores is the hypothesized cause of La Ciudad Blanca’s downfall and/or abandonment. Beyond the usual suspects of war, colonization, or social unrest, there is one thing that life on Earth may never be able to avoid: disease. The reason for which countless cultures in the Americas were erased, pathogens have exposed both our biological and sociocultural weaknesses for thousands of years, but as Preston writes, we have hope in the perennial lesson of history—that we may collectively learn from the past to aspire to the well-being of all humanity’s future.