Title: The Lost City of the Monkey God
Subtitle: A True Story
Description: Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God--but then committed suicide without revealing its location.

Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Douglas Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.

Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal--and incurable--disease.
Subjects: Description and travel, Extinct cities, Indians of Central America, Travel, Discovery and exploration, Antiquities, Ancient Cities and towns, Large type books, Cities and towns, ancient, Indians of central america, antiquities, Mosquitia (nicaragua and honduras), description and travel, Mosquitia (nicaragua and honduras), nyt:hardcover-nonfiction=2017-01-22, New York Times bestseller, New York Times reviewed, HISTORY, Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), Expeditions & Discoveries, Central America, Discoveries in geography, Indios de Honduras, Descubrimiento y exploraciones, Arqueología, Ciudades y pueblos desaparecidos, Indios de Nicaragua, Ciudades y pueblos antiguos, Descripciones y viajes
Places: Mosquitia (Nicaragua and Honduras), Mosquitía (Nicaragua y Honduras)
People: Douglas J. Preston, Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), Theodore Morde
Time periods: 1940s, 2012