Jungleland
A Mysterious Lost City and a True Story of Deadly Adventure
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4.0 • 27 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
For fans of The Lost City of Z, The River of Doubt, and Lost in Shangri-La—a real-life Indiana Jones story, set in the mysterious jungles of Honduras.
"I began to daydream about the jungle...."
On April 6, 1940, explorer and future World War II spy Theodore Morde (who would one day attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler), anxious about the perilous journey that lay ahead of him.
Deep inside “the little Amazon,” the jungles of Honduras’s Mosquito Coast—one of the largest, wildest, and most impenetrable stretches of tropical land in the world—lies the fabled city of Ciudad Blanca: the White City. For centuries, it has lured explorers, including Spanish conquistador Herman Cortes. Some intrepid souls got lost within its dense canopy; some disappeared. Others never made it out alive. Then, in 1939, Theodore Morde claimed that he had located this El Dorado-like city. Yet before he revealed its location, Morde died under strange circumstances, giving credence to those who believe that the spirits of the Ciudad Blanca killed him.
In Jungleland, Christopher S. Stewart seeks to retrace Morde's steps and answer the questions his death left hanging. Is this lost city real or only a tantalyzing myth? What secrets does the jungle hold? What continues to draw explorers into the unknown jungleland at such terrific risk? In this absorbing true-life thriller, journalist Christopher S. Stewart sets out to find answers—a white-knuckle adventure that combines Morde’s wild, enigmatic tale with Stewart’s own epic journey to find the truth about the White City.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a modern-day quest to locate the fabled Lost City, Stewart, an editor at the Wall Street Journal and the author of Hunting the Tiger, takes the reader on a perilous, thrill-laden search for that mythical place, first bitten by the adventure bug in the spring of 2008 after researching the journals of American explorer and spy Theodore Morde. The journalist parallels his own quest to find the mysterious Ciudad Blanca, the White City, to the search by Morde, into a remote part of southeastern Honduras, with its jungle heat, harsh river trip, natives, and other dangers. While Morde's vision of the White City turns out to be folklore, Stewart finds himself at odds with snakes, crocodiles, timber pirates, and a brewing civil war, which going farther into the bush as he questions himself about his mission. Possibly the book should have been about Morde and his various identities as WWII spy and bold explorer than the author's expedition, which comes up with few results. Still, this is a gritty, remarkable tale of exploration and risk in a nervy trek to the edge of civilization.
Customer Reviews
Jungleland
It was ok ended kind of strange.