Searching for El Dorado

The real land of El Dorado, deep in the Amazon rainforest, is a far cry from the mythical city of gold: though its soil could potentially yield billions of dollars, Guyana is a nation of “gilded paupers,” one of the very poorest countries in the western hemisphere.

In this adventure-filled narrative, journalist Marc Herman takes us down a supply road in a limping cargo truck, treks into a muggy and muddy mine on foot, and soars above the forest canopy in a skittering plane. He falls in with a rowdy crew of gold miners who measure manliness by the number of times they’ve had malaria, and wear their life savings in the form of oversized rings and huge gold necklaces. He also penetrates the corporate facade of international strip-mining operations, which despite tremendous technological and political power have failed to alleivate the area’s poverty. Searching for El Dorado is an eyeopening look at the scandals, the business, the mythology of gold—reaveling a fascinating, contradictory part of the world and of the human psyche.

Marc Herman's work has appeared in publications including Mother Jones, Spin, Harper's, and McSweeney's. He first earned an enthusiastic following for his coverage of the 1996 elections for Might Magazine. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.


From the Hardcover edition.