Searching for El Dorado: A Journey into the South American Rainforest on the Tail of the World's Largest Gold Rush

The search for the lost City of Gold in the Amazon basin has inspired adventurers since the days of the Spanish conquistadors and Sir Walter Raleigh. Intrigued by the cultural, economic, and environmental fallout of a five-hundred-year gold rush, journalist Marc Herman traveled to the rainforests of Guyana, where he joined up with a rowdy crew of local gold-miners as they pursued their dreams of riches.

In an adventure-filled narrative rich with humor and empathy, Herman brings to life the group of miners. They are independent prospectors who wear all their earnings on their fingers and around their necks -- their bank accounts are oversized rings and huge gold necklaces. But yards away from the mines where these men seek their fortunes with techniques reminiscent of California’s forty-niners -- dynamite, tin pans, and wooden sluices -- there are mines run by international corporations that fail to alleviate the area’s poverty despite their tremendous technological and political power.

Searching for El Dorado is an astonishing achievement, a lively, humor-filled adventure full of colorful people and incidents wrapped around an eye-opening look at the contemporary colonialism that is enough to make you question the value of gold.