Christopher S. StewartBesprekingen

Wow. The book wasn't perfect by any means, but with a subject so fascinating it hardly had to be - plus, I feel like I have at least somewhat of an understanding of the horrifying confusion that was the '90s Balkan War(s) now.

East to Read, But Little Substance

"Jungleland" is written by a New York native who has a midlife crisis and decides to go to Honduras to track down a legendary lost city. The author alternates chapters between his diary and the story of an American explorer in the early 1940s.

It seemed like the author decided from the get-go that he was going to obsess about the legend, as if an obsession would make his crisis and his uncomfortable conditions more authentic. The author spends a great deal of time talking about the dangers of drug-runners, an invasion by the exiled president, malaria, and river bandits, but the worst thing the author encounters are terrible blisters on his feet.

Predictably, the lost city becomes a metaphor for something the author had all along: his family and his life in New York.

On the positive side, "Jungleland" is an easy read. It falls off toward the end when the alternating chapters stop paralleling each other (a lot was squeezed out of the 19040s explorer's story, perhaps in an attempt to beef up the length of the book). Nevertheless, the writing style is enjoyable.

Jungleland is a true story that reads like fiction. This story is part adventure story and part WW2 spy story. I liked the short chapters and all the interesting characters Stewart meets along the way. Stewart is in search of the White City deep in the Honduran jungle. He tries to follow the same route Theodore Mode's expedition took in 1940. Will he find it and does the Ciudad Blanca actually exist?

This book reads like the written edition of Expedition Unknown. A contemporary author is trying to follow the trail of an earlier explorer in the jungle. very hard to get into - not my favorite form of literature. Harder to read than see on TV.

Stewart, a journalist who "doesn't like camping" sets out to find a mysterious lost city in the Amazon rainforest. Alternating with his own story, he recounts the tales of others who have searched for the same goal. In my opinion, the success of this type of travel/adventure depends upon both the attitude and the storytelling ability of the author. An overly high opinion of oneself or the importance of one's "mission," or an inability to tell a story well are the two reasons some attempts at this fall flat. Stewart does not take himself or his "quest" so seriously that you want to laugh at him,but yet, his reactions and experiences feel genuine and interesting. He also tells the stories of others quite well. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys the travel/adventure genre. It is neither hardboiled nor saccharine, striking just the right balance for an exciting but essentially frivolous adventure story.

This could have been a fascinating book. But the author is a whiner having some sort of crisis. Two stars because its still an exciting story notwithstanding.

I love stories about explorers and modern people retracing their steps in exotic places. This book meets those criteria.

Very well done history of Arkan and how he became a criminal, as well as what happened before and during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Easy to read and compelling. I couldn't put it down. It was an excellent biography of Arkan's rise and his life and the war in Yugoslavia and his part in it. It was very easy to read and totally gripping.

Travel books have always been a favorite of mine. I love to travel, but don't get the opportunity to do so often enough, so I have to explore the world vicariously through books. When I read the description of Jungleland, it immediately caught my attention, because it combines my love of travel and my fascination with archaeology and lost civilizations. I was very excited to read it.

I wasn't disappointed. Christopher Stewart has crafted a fascinating, well-written book that is less travelogue than adventure. He also does an outstanding job of comparing his own experiences with that of Theodore Morde, who made the journey over 50 years before. The alternating chapter points of view was a little jarring at first, but after a few chapters I got used to it and actually began to enjoy it.

It's easy to think that the world is entirely explored, a known quantity. In this information age, when we can simply log onto the Internet to learn about anything we want to, we don't realize that there are so many places that are completely untouched by modern man. Stewart goes into just such places, and the story he tells of each place he stops is riveting. Even more, though, is the story within the story, of how his own attitudes and life are changed by the trip he takes and the people he meets. this, to me, is the mark of a great travel/adventure book; it certainly marks my own favorites, whether it is Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins (which introduced me to the genre) or Bruce Feiler's explorations of faith, religion, and geography in his books. The physical journey is only really half the story in these books, and it is fascinating to see how the trip changes the author.

Don’t come to this book expecting much about the wartime espionage activities of Theodore Morde. Apart from an episode in Istanbul where he talks with Franz von Pappen, Germany’s ambassador to Turkey and an old spymaster himself, about assassinating Hitler, this book has little to offer in that area, and you’d be better off just going straight to the listed bibliographic sources.

While I didn’t get the espionage history I hoped for when picking up this book, I still enjoyed it. Stewart moves his narrative along quickly, alternating between Morde’s life – particularly his 1939 expedition to the Mosquito Coast –and his own expedition (with archaeologist Chris Begley as a guide) to that area 70 years later. Stewart juggles so many things in this book – archaeological discovery, self-discovery, Morde’s life, espionage, and Honduran history – that, if you’re bored with one subject, your area of interest quickly shows up again. The flip side of that is, of course, that it’s more of an appetizer than a meal, but it’s still an enjoyable book and not a major investment of time. I particularly enjoyed the encounters with Hondurans (and tourists) in both time periods.

And, yes, there is a resolution of sorts to the matter of whether Ciudad Blanca exists.

First Line: The man called himself Rana, or Frog.

Armed with a World War II spy's personal notebooks and the mysterious coordinates carved into the man's walking stick, journalist Christopher S. Stewart goes to Honduras to see if he can do what the spy (Theodore Morde) claimed he did in 1940: find the Ciudad Blanca-- the white city of gold hidden deep in the rain forest of the Mosquito Coast, one of the wildest places on Earth. What the journalist would learn is that the journey itself oftentimes is more important than reaching a destination.

Alternating chapters tell us of Stewart, a New Yorker with a bad back and no fondness for camping or hiking, who decides to go off on this adventure even though there's political unrest in the area. Compared with the chapters on him, the ones about Theodore Morde sound like Indiana Jones. Morde was a seasoned amateur when he set out through the jungle in 1940. He'd already circled the globe five times and covered the Spanish Civil War with Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. After claiming that he had found Ciudad Blanca, Morde would go on to become a spy during World War II and attempt to assassinate Hitler.

I found this book to be uneven. As long as the author focused on Morde and Morde's expedition or on the facts of his own, I found it very interesting. However, Stewart's attempt to show The More Sensitive Side of Explorer Man sounded too much like whining. Blisters, rain, heat, missing his family, listening to his wife whine about things she should have been able to take care of in his absence... these things all brought the enjoyment factor down further and further for me.

If you like finite results in books like this, you may want to rethink reading this book. There are no real results to either man's journey into the jungle unless you count what Stewart learned about himself. However, as uneven as I think the book is, it is worth reading if you enjoy the search for lost civilizations. As wired and modern as most of us are, it makes me smile to think that there are still lots of adventures like this to be had on this planet.