Jungleland: A Mysterious Lost City, a WWII Spy, and a True Story of Deadly Adventure
Reminiscent of Turn Right at Machu Picchu, by Mark Adams (2011), in which a New York journalist experienced all manner of mishap and misery while trekking to a remote pre-Columbian city, Stewart’s chronicle relates his 2008 odyssey to Honduras. He sought a place of rumored existence called the White City, with which he became obsessed upon learning that, in 1940, colorful adventurer Theodore Morde announced its discovery, though he kept proprietarily circumspect about its exact location. Morde then became an OSS agent but never returned to Honduras. With the assistance of Morde’s journal, an experienced American archaeologist, and local Honduran guides, Stewart sallied forth for the tropical forest where lurked the White City. Rutted roads, torrential rivers, and steep mountains interposed, battering the author’s confidence in carrying on, but the narrative must, and he did, reaching in a state of exhaustion a site that might or might not have been the White City. Wryly self-critical, Stewart entertains vicarious explorers about a journey that was better in the abstract than in actuality. --Gilbert Taylor