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.
Well that has to go on the list!
ReplyDeleteIt'll give you game ideas.
DeleteYou 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.
DeleteNot 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.
DeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
Delete