In Searching for El Dorado, Marc Herman, drops readers straight into the center of Guyana's Amazon rainforest, the thickest rainforest in the world. Marc is with a very colorful group of Guyanese gold-miners, guys who wear their whole net worth on their fingers and around their necks in the form of huge rings and necklaces—even if they have no shoes or a belt to hold their pants up. These guys are like the 49ers in California, South American seekers of fortune, often using literally 19th century technology to mine what is the world's most gold-rich terrain. There's enough gold to foster an enduring myth of a lost city built entirely of gold: El Dorado, the same glimmering legend that drew Conquistadors and Sir Walter Raleigh across oceans is motivating these strange South American men. At the same time there are enough lives at risk in this enterprise to make you question the value of gold.

Marc is a truly smart and funny writer and the perfect guide for this amazing trip into the Amazon. The following has never been published before and it includes: a hallucination, a wild boar, Eddie Grant and the symptoms of malaria.

Marc Herman's writings have appeared in Civilization, Spin, Mother Jones and McSweeney's. The Village Voice named him a Writer on the Verge, while Book Magazine dubbed him a Newcomer to Watch in 2002. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

—Coates Bateman