Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Book Review: Jungle of Stone

Jungle of Stone: The True story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
William Carlsen
Biography, Exploration



Jungle of Stone has mysterious lost cities, jungles, revolutions, intrepid explorers, and a touch of international rivalry. What more could you ask for?


Oh, and it's also pretty well written. It doesn't quite have the driving novel-like pace of, say, The Lost City of Z, but its more informative overall. The illustrations, from one of the titular Two Men (Frederick Catherwood), are flat-out gorgeous. My only gripe is that the information on the Maya themselves is confined to one chapter; I'd have traded a bit of the travel narrative for some more data.

The aforementioned The Lost City of Z  by David Grann is a great, quick read. Alexander von Humboldt makes a couple of appearances here, as well. On a slightly different note, Michael D. Coe's Breaking the Maya Code is a must-read for anyone interested in ancient writings and their deciphering.

6 comments:

  1. Well that has to go on the list!

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    1. It'll give you game ideas.

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    2. You mean _more_ game ideas. I just finished Hell's Gate by Bill Schutt. It felt like he got to a lot of the same material you did for the Lost City of Z but he was setting it in World War II and he went a slightly different direction with it.

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    3. Not familiar with the author. Of course, what I like about this one (like The Lost City of Z) is that it's non-fiction that reads like fiction.

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  2. I finally got to it -- for some reasons I fought with the prose style -- I found it very easy to get distracted and set the book aside. The art is lovely, tho.

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    1. I can understand this. As I said in the review, it doesn't have the narrative drive that I've come to appreciate (if not expect) in high-quality non-fiction.

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