See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.

30 used & new from $4.58

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
 
Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods
 
 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.
 
  

Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods (Hardcover)

by Christopher Shaw (Author) "DRIVING EAST FROM VERACRUZ, YOU COME DOWN OUT OF THE green volcanic Tuxtla Mountains immediately onto the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a torrid flatland of savannas..." (more)
Key Phrases: Piedras Negras, Agua Azul, Montes Azules (more...)
4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)


Available from these sellers.


4 new from $53.99 25 used from $4.58 1 collectible from $38.50
Also Available in: List Price: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover (1St Edition) 2 used & new from $20.00
Paperback $21.95 $21.95 18 used & new from $16.50

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya

A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya

by Linda Schele
4.4 out of 5 stars (14)  $18.99
Moon Guatemala (Moon Handbooks)

Moon Guatemala (Moon Handbooks)

by Al Argueta
3.8 out of 5 stars (12)  $13.57
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives

Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives

by Brian L. Weiss
4.2 out of 5 stars (382)  $10.98
Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya

Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya

by David Stuart
5.0 out of 5 stars (2)  $23.07
1001 Most Useful Spanish Words (Beginners' Guides)

1001 Most Useful Spanish Words (Beginners' Guides)

by Seymour Resnick
4.1 out of 5 stars (101)  $2.00
Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Flowing across the limestone plateaus and tropical forests of Mexico and Guatemala, the Usamacinta River was the cradle of ancient Mayan civilization, heavily traveled and lined with palaces and huge cities. In the aftermath of the European conquest, the rugged Usamacinta country became a remote afterthought, a place where few travelers dared to venture.

Christopher Shaw, an American writer and canoeist, makes a journey down the Maya's "watery path," reporting his sightings from this broad stream of "pale jade shot with turquoise and slightly clouded with silt." Sacred Monkey River (whose title translates the Maya name for the great watercourse) is a spiritually charged quest into once-sacred geography--but a land profaned in recent years by warfare and ethnic division. Traveling by kayak, a craft he explains to locals as a canoe of the winik, or native people, of the far north, Shaw takes us through forbidding territory, delivering glimpses of rainforest country that is in imminent danger of being felled by the region's expanding timber concerns and dammed by governments intent on harnessing hydroelectric--and political--power. Ironically, his snapshots of the unspoiled Usamacinta may turn out to be documents of a disappeared world--unless, he observes, international environmental agencies find ways to join with the Maya to preserve their forest world. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
A naturalist who once edited Adirondack Life magazine, Shaw canoes the rough waters of Guatemala's Usumacinta River in this uneven Mesoamerican travel adventure. Like the river itself, the narrative begins slowly, gradually gathering momentum as the author abandons secondary anthropological research in favor of his own, often profound, impressions. The Usumacinta has always contained a liminal world; Shaw describes the fluid boundary between Guatemala and Mexico as "an unruly no-man's-land inhabited by political refugees, fugitives and foreign adventurers." Shaw's travels took him through Mexico's Chiapas region not long after the Zapatista uprising (a little more modern political history earlier in the narrative would have helped novice readers immensely, especially since Shaw slips back and forth between the main journey and one undertaken in 1989, before the uprising). During his river run, he encounters rebels, wayfarers and, in the book's most exciting sequence, drug smugglers. He also confronts exhilarating danger in the river itself ("the boat leaped forward onto the crown, and the world dropped away"). In describing the remote, rugged landscape, Shaw comes down heavily on the side of ecological conservation, bemoaning the loss of the surrounding rainforest to loggers and chicleros (workers who harvest sap from the chicle trees to make gum). A gifted travel writer, Shaw evokes the Usumacinta's territory with startling clarity, though his chronology is sometimes confusing. Veteran canoers and armchair travelers, as well as fans of ancient Mayan civilization, will find these narrative waters exhilarating, if a bit choppy. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393048373
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393048377
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #807,528 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category: (What's this?)

    #34 in  Books > Travel > Latin America > Central America > Guatemala

Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
DRIVING EAST FROM VERACRUZ, YOU COME DOWN OUT OF THE green volcanic Tuxtla Mountains immediately onto the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a torrid flatland of savannas and wetlands traced with estuaries, shallow lakes, and slow-moving rivers. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Piedras Negras, Agua Azul, Montes Azules, Mexico City, San Vicente, Santa Cruz, Chan Bor, David Kashinski, Chan Win, Sierra Lacandon, Chan K'in, North American, Bird Jaguar, Chol Lacandons, Milky Way, Santo Domingo, United States, Don Moises, Pico de Oro, First Father, Francisco Madero, Linda Schele, Machete Jim, San Pedro, Tammy Ridenour
New!
Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:


Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
Check a corresponding box or enter your own tags in the field below.
(5)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search
No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

 

Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, August 5, 2000
By Walter Martin (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
Just read this wonderful book. Shaw, in a CANOE, not kayak, unlike what the editorial says, runs the Usumacinta and Jatate rivers in Chiapas and brings back a wonderful tale of adventure, in the framework of a profound and insightful understanding of the place and its cultural and geographical contours. His theories on the connection between canoe travel and the Maya spiritual world are enlightening and raise plenty of their own questions. The descriptions of the rivers and ruins are vivid and inviting. The author's connection between river travel and Maya spiritual travel makes me want to run a river as soon as possible. His knowledge of rivers and their intricacies, as a former whitewater guide, together with the interesting characters he meets along the way, all come together to form a fascinating take on a mysterious and awe-inspiring world. What a great read.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a real page turner, September 27, 2000
This book has been a genuine page turner for me, and as I approached the end I tried not to read too much at each sitting so I could prolong its pleasures.

It is for anyone interested in Mesoamerica, Mayan culture, canoeing as adventure, or boats as the movers of trade and ideas. Also for anyone who is lusting for an otherworld experience, metaphorically or actually, though trave, boating, psychogenic drugs, or all of the above. It is full of honest hard-nosed obserevation of nature and the specific nature of this area, and at the same time streches for and is able to peek at the"final" trip, perhaps as many civilizatins saw it, goin on a craft down a river or out to sea/see. shaw effortlessly intertwines some Spanish into his evocative--dare I use the word--poetic English, always aiming for and touching precision and clarity without sacrificing mystery. On, I believe, its deepest level, the language as well as the story drew me into the unknow, into the future, and of course the past as well.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Just what I've been waiting for, October 13, 2000
This is the real thing folks. No more cute travel stories that romanticize without substance, that Disneyize and exaggerate. This book is the story of the author's courageous and thoughtful trip through an amazingly historical place that is also presently complicated and important. However, the author comes at it from a personal angle: the cosmology of canoes. We learn the importance of canoe travel not only to the Maya but to the author and people in general. That connects to the Maya cosmology and culture, the sense of place that is inherent in living in a watershed and having your existence contingent to flowing water (whether you live in the Lacandon forest or Westchester County), the importance of the geography of the region to the people who live there, and then finally to how all this connects to the Zapatista movement and the modern, and not so modern (this thing is full of scholarly but apt historical asides) plight of the indigenous Maya. All along the way you get to like the author, in his sometimes goofy gringo ways but his omnipresent awareness of his own place within the experience. Sprinkle in healthy doses of heart-thumping whitewater in canoes with inexperienced bow-men, death defying swims, life-threatening bandits, and tight, musical prose, and you've got one heck of a book. I tell you what, Shaw's got it right, the same way Matthiesson did. I recommend this book extremely highly. I wish it were getting more publicity. Read it. Its important.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
Ad
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Half done
I was disappointed after getting to the end of the book to find out that the author only navegated half-way down the Usumacinta. Read more
Published on October 31, 2003 by Brian D. Rudert

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
(From Planeta Journal) - Ready to explore one of the world's most intriguing regions? Take your trip with Christopher Shaw who introduces readers to the Usumacinta River and its... Read more
Published on April 11, 2001 by Ron Mader

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
(From Planeta Journal) - Ready to explore one of the world's most intriguing regions? Take your trip with Christopher Shaw who introduces readers to the Usumacinta River and its... Read more
Published on April 11, 2001 by Ron Mader

5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting and spiritual trip into the heart of mesoamerica
This book has been a genuine page turner for me, and as I approached the end, I tried not to read to much at ech sitting so I could prolong its pleasures. Read more
Published on September 25, 2000 by Nathan Farb

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Journey
I picked this book up because when I'd read the exploration stories last year in Johnson & Coates "Nabokov's Blues" I'd gotten fascinated by their short accounts of... Read more
Published on August 18, 2000 by Dwight D. Schmidt

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

 Beta (What's this?)
New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.
This product's forum (0 discussions)
  Discussion Replies Latest Post
  No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
  [Cancel]


Active discussions in related forums
   


Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)


Look for Similar Items by Category


Hot Deals on Hitachi

Hitachi power tools
Routers don't get much more powerful than the "Incredible Hulk." Check out the entire line of Hitachi routers sold by Amazon.com.

Shop all Hitachi

 

Best Books of 2008

Best of 2008
Find our top 100 editors' picks as well as customers' favorites in dozens of categories in our Best Books of 2008 Store.
 

Buy Three Books, Get a Fourth Free

4-for-3 Books
Order any four eligible books under $10 and get the lowest-price book free in our 4-for-3 Books Store. See more details.
 

Best Books

Best of the Month
See our editors' picks and more of the best new books on our Best of the Month page.
 
Ad

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.



Where's My Stuff?

Shipping & Returns

Need Help?

Your Recent History

  (What's this?)
You have no recently viewed items or searches.

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.

Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session.

Continue shopping: Top Sellers
Free
Free by Chris Anderson
Paranoia
Paranoia by Joseph Finder
My Soul to Lose
My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent
Glenn Beck's Common Sense

Conditions of Use | Privacy Notice © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates