Jungle of Stone audiobook

4.5 rounded up. Very good book -- well written and highly informative. Carlsen's book does a fine job picking up the highlights of both accounts by Stephens and Catherwood ( Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas & Yucatan, 2 Vols and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan 1-2), also examines the lives of both men. More importantly though, Carlsen shows how the current view before Stephens' and Catherwood's trek of discovery was that "the Americas had always been a land occupied by primitive, inferior people," and how that notion would be radically altered after the publication of Stephens' books. Much more here at my reading journal, where I look at all three books at once. I'm a history nerd so I did read both of Stephens' and Catherwood's original accounts that Carlsen covers here, but this book is ideal for non-history geeks who may prefer the shorter version.

Ce carte! Aventuri, oameni de excepție, locuri exotice,revoluții,ambiții ,realizări și eșecuri,un Titanic avant la lettre. Cartea asta mi-a deschis alte 10 căi de must read.

I received an advance copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads, and am grateful for the opportunity.This was an excellent historical narrative that gave sufficient attention to the personal character of the key figures while remaining connected to a larger social and political environment including everyone from generals to farmers. I liked how the book connected several different threads of history and focus - not just the history of Mesoamerican groups and their rediscovery, but also the larger history at the time of the discoveries, as doing so helps place the achievements of Stephens and Catherwood into context and demonstrates their significant contribution to historiography of Central America.Even with this being an uncorrected proof, I have no major concerns with the work. My only minor issue was that the organization of the narrative was sometimes jumbled. For instance, just after the two adventurers found the first of the lost cities, the following chapter jumps back to the beginnings of Stephens' life, which I feel would have served better in an introductory section prior. Still, there are very few problems with the book, and I expect that the final, published version is even better.

It is a very good book. It's very broad historical scope has to do with the fact that John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood explored damn near everything the ancient world left behind; including Greece, Egypt and Rome. But their trips into the jungle make this a history rich-high adventure-dual biography juggernaut. History buffs, adventure lovers and Maya freaks will love it.

Review Title: Indiana Jones and the lost Mayan cities Fictional archeologist-hero Indiana Jones has nothing to do with this book, but real life adventurers John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood actually did what the movies only imitated 150 years later. While they didn't "discover" the Mayan ruins of Central America--they weren't the first humans to see them, usually being lead by local native guides, and they weren't even the first European or American travelers to see many of the sites--they were the first to realize the importance of what they were seeing and publish thrilling words and pictures of what they saw.Carlsen wisely avoids the Indiana Jones comparison and lets the real biographies and histories tell the story. In 1839,and again on a second trip in 1842, our two real life adventurers headed to Central America. Stephens was an American lawyer and diplomat who had already written best selling books about his travels through Europe and the Middle East, and was now sent south to wind up a treaty with the crumbling Guatemalan government. Catherwood was a British architect and artist who had already done his share of adventuring in Egypt and Palestine including an undercover visit to the Muslim Holy place the Dome of the Rock to provide the first visual images from a Western Christian perspective. Stephens had hired on Catherwood as his official diplomatic assistant and unofficial artist in residence to capture the visual imagery to go with Stephens's text, and after the official work was done, they headed into the jungles in search of these rumored ruins.What they found and described in the most comprehensive survey of the sites yet attempted exceeded their wildest imagination. Out of seemingly trackless jungle rose massive stone temples, walls, palaces, statues, stone art and even what appeared to be writing. While it would be another century or more (Carlsen concludes in 2016 that more ruins and artifacts are still being found) before the writing was deciphered and Mayan history reconstructed from it, Stephens and Catherwood recognized that these were unique remains of an unknown civilization uniquely American in origin. All theories up to the time had posited Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, or "lost tribes of Israel" origins for the ruins, assuming that no native American culture had the intelligence, population, government, economy and agriculture to create such massive cities and stunning artifacts. While their guesses about the ages of the ruins were mostly wrong (both earlier and later than the current best archeological evidence suggests) their descriptions, pictures, and theories opened up a new way to view the age, provenance and worth of the still-new continents of the New World.And in keeping with the Indiana Jones adventure, Carlsen documents the many perils of the 19th century travelers--snakes and insects, roaming bands of revolutionaries (Mexico and its Central American neighbors were breaking free of their Spanish colonial pasts, and of each other), rainy season monsoons and dry season droughts, narrow paths clinging to steep cliffs or raging riversides. Both men suffered multiple bouts of malaria (Stephens would die at age 47 in New York from liver damage caused by his many infections) but survived all their narrow escapes to live to tell about them. The books they wrote were immensely popular and remain in print today. Catherwood's drawings, here paired with modern photographs on many pages, were startlingly accurate, and a two-volume oversized folio first edition of his drawings sell today for $50,000 and up in the monochrome version; the exceedingly rare hand colored version (only about a dozen are known to exist) sells for five times that or more when they hit the market.Carlsen intersperses biographical details of the two men throughout and in separate chapters. Like many such adventurers, their lives back home were often sad, and they seemed most at home on the trail of the Mayan ruins rumored over the next hill. Carlsen provides footnotes and bibliography for those who wish to dive deeper into Mayan archeology and history. Reading this book took me back to my younger self discovering musty books on the library shelves and wanting to be an archeologist when I grew up. While I never realized that ambition, the love of books that take me places never left, and my life's work has enabled me to visit many of the places I read about. Carlsen takes me back to make me feel like that little boy's desire, and he may do the same for you.

Jungle of Stone is both enthralling and enlightening. I was captivated from beginning to end by Carlsen’s masterful storytelling, which whisked me away on a breathtaking adventure while filling my mind with fascinating facts. Fans of the Peabody and Emerson Egyptology mysteries by Elizabeth Peters may find themselves as captivated as I was by the real-life extraordinary adventures of Stephens and Catherwood in Central America. They began their explorations together in 1839, discovering for themselves mysteries of the Maya civilization. The book is rich with Catherwood’s drawings and Carlsen’s photographs, enhancing the perfectly paced text. I was especially draw to this book because my son, like Stephens and Catherwood, was captivated early in life by Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman cultures--and one thing led to another. Central and South American cultures caught his imagination, and he found his calling as an archaeologist, deciphering Maya glyphs. While reading Jungle of Stone, I was delighted to recognize places and details that my son had shared with me, and I've gained an even greater appreciation of the daring and insatiable curiosity of explorers. Also, I shuddered at the dangers described!

I am absolutely the target audience for this book, and I really enjoyed it. The story concentrates on the two explorers, Stevens and Catherwood, but has a lot of other information about the time period, the Mayan civilization, the locations as they were in the 1840s, and the consequences of their trips. The author quite obviously did a bucketload of research on these two men, although there were periods when that research ran dry. What he did find is pretty interesting; these two were definitely men of their time. Their findings included wonderful, realistic illustrations by Catherwood of the ruins (which you can see online), and many measurements and observations that were invaluable to later historians.The audiobook was greatly enhanced by the narration of Paul Michael Garcia.

a thrilling examination of two men history has mostly forgotten but who did the world, and in particularly western civilization, a tremendous favor, by fully describing the mayan ruins and identifying that the were not the work of some lost and sea-wondering old world civilization but the product of native american genius.

A very interesting exploration (see what I did there) of the beginnings of modern anthropology/archaeology. I especially enjoyed it as a sort of prequel to Lost City of Z. These two gentlemen explorers had the success which one can only imagine Percy Fawcett dreamed of. Interesting description of the turmoil and revolution in Central America ca. 1840 -- I had never heard of the ill fated Central American Republic. What might have been if it had succeeded. Makes one wonder about the societal pre-requisites for launching a successful republic - few outside of the US have done so successfully. But I digress. So too, does the author, unfortunately and it is is one of the shortcomings of the narrative. I did enjoy the mini-biographies of both men - and I was inspired to want to read more about the Panama Canal, but I felt shortchanged. I wanted to learn more about the Mayan history - and while he does, ultimately, get around to it. It was too long in coming -- at the end of the book and sort of rushed. Still and interesting and educational read on a variety of fronts.

Stephens and Catherwood are deservedly called the "fathers of archaeology in the Americas." Although there were several Spanish excursions into the jungles of Guatemala, Honduras, and southern Mexico in the two preceding centuries, theirs were the books that gave worldwide fame to Mayan lost cities of stone. Their two "Incidents of Travel" books published in 1841 and 1843 became instant best-sellers. Carlsen retraces the historic journeys of Stephens and Catherwood in this engaging, well researched book. Hacking trails through dense jungles, navigating twisting waterways, climbing daunting mountains, enduring torments of ticks and mosquitoes, the intrepid explorers wended through over 30 overgrown, mostly hidden stone cities known only to locals. Stephens kept a sprightly journal detailing their encounters with nature, local people, and warring armies. He made prophetic comments about the advanced culture, sophisticated people, and antiquity of the ruins. He believed these were works of contemporary native's ancestors, while most scientists believed they resulted from old world civilizations. Catherwood, an artist, meticulously documented architecture in sketches and daguerreotypes. Reading like fiction, the book keeps you gripped in adventures, politics, and the personal lives of Stephens and Catherwood. It gives an immediate experience of their extraordinary discoveries, and the turbulent times and challenging lives of the discoverers.

What a wonderful introduction to the Mayan civilisation and their incredibly advanced culture which existed long before the western one this bok was for me! The story of two courageous explorers with an indomitable spirit, who made discoveries which rank as high as any other anywhere. Stephens and Catherwood opened up a whole new world in Central America by their sheer will and determination, fighting unfavourable odds, in hostile weather, during the middle of a civil war, with severe illnesses. It probably couldn't get harder if someone had planned it. It's hard to imagine that the giant ruins of Tikal, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Copan etc which are so familiar today, were all explored and documented and captured in great detail in form of drawings by these two in just a couple of expeditions. Time and again they overcome adversity to keep going using their ingenuity to stave off one disaster after another. The author firmly plants the two on centre stage, interspersing the narrative of discovery with their biographies and an insight into the Mayan culture and architecture in a seamless manner which just flows so well, that you'll find it very hard to put this book down.

John Stephens and Frederick Catherwood met while exploring Egypt and the Middle East in the 1830's, then in the 1840's they explored Guatemala and Mexico searching for Mayan ruins. They are frequently referred to "discovering" them but how can you discover something that that natives know about and that the Spanish partially destroyed 200 years before. What would be interesting is to read their books about their travels. Stephen's is reported to have an easy conversational style about his writings, and Catherwood's illustrations are almost photographic in their detail.The book is part biography, part exploration and part speculation of the Mayan culture. For a lawyer and an engineer, Stephens and Catherwood were keen observers and very forward thinking about what they were observing. Highly recommend this book.