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This new ebook edition of Cities of Gold includes for very first time over 100 never-before-published photographs taken during the author's epic, thousand mile horseback journey across Arizona and New Mexico. It also includes many rare and extraordinary historical photographs of the Old West, Native Americans, pioneers, prospectors, Indian pueblos, and vanished landscapes. "The Old West's last glimmers flicker through this piercingly beautiful adventure, an unforgettable saga in which Preston, astride his horse Popeye, traverses the desert and mountain wilderness of Arizona and New Mexico retracing the trail-blazing 1540-41 expedition of Spanish Explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold ... In place of the mythical winning of the West, Preston unfolds a harrowing tale of loss." - Publishers Weekly"The entire book is a sheer pleasure to read." - The San Diego Union-Tribune"A Blue Highways on horseback, well worth the trip." - Kirkus Reviews"A riveting yarn, with as many turns as a switchback road." - The Christian Science Monitor"A fearful, fascinating tale." - Los Angeles Times"A journey of historical importance." - The New York Times"By setting out with a companion and four horses to track Coronado's army across a thousand miles of brutal desert and mountain country, from the Mexican border through Arizona and New Mexico, the author is ready to risk his life to try to see with his own eyes, as it were, 'that moment, 450 years ago, when the peoples of the Old World and New World first encountered each other' and quickly began the strife-torn redefining of America. Throughout the book, Preston intersperses the original reports and memoirs of Coronado's adventure with accounts of his own party's hard progress, making the centuries dissolve into a common, first-person, present-tense narrative. And along the way he records stories of the people and places he encounters, making brief excursions into mining booms and busts, the history of livestock ranching, the impact of barbed wire and windmills, the first mail routes, homesteading, the destruction of the Indian nations, and much more." - Smithsonian MagazineDouglas Preston is a journalist and author who has published twenty-six books, nonfiction and fiction, several of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers. In addition to Cities of Gold he is the author of several books on Southwestern history, including Talking to the Ground and The Royal Road. Preston is the co-creator, with Lincoln Child, of the Pendergast series of novels, including Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities - both of which were named in a National Public Radio listener poll as being among the 100 greatest suspense novels ever written. Preston's most recent nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, is being made into a movie starring George Clooney. Preston also writes for the New Yorker magazine, the Atlantic and Smithsonian, and he taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He divides his time between Maine and New Mexico.Walter W. Nelson began his creative career in 1967 and it has spanned a period of 40 years. He first explored the field of photography, traveling around the world, discovering spiritual places, deep landscapes, places of origin, experimenting with abstract colors and textures, always seeking the visual heart of existence in the desert, mountains, canyons, rivers, and cities of the world. He later branched out to painting and sculpture, and combined all three into an ever-expanding visu
About the Author
Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school--he was almost immediately expelled--he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle; the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard's fist; and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother. ) As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs of Wellesley, terrorizing the natives with home-made rockets and incendiary devices mail-ordered from the backs of comic books or concocted from chemistry sets. With a friend they once attempted to fly a rocket into Wellesley Square; the rocket malfunctioned and nearly killed a man mowing his lawn. They were local celebrities, often appearing in the "Police Notes" section of The Wellesley Townsman. It is a miracle they survived childhood intact. After unaccountably being rejected by Stanford University (a pox on it) , Preston attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy before settling down to English literature. After graduating, Preston began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and eventually manager of publications. (Preston also taught writing at Princeton University and was managing editor of Curator. ) His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by a rising young star at St. Martin's Press, a polymath by the name of Lincoln Child. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: "This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!" That thriller would, of course, be Relic. In 1986, Douglas Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time, following the advice of S. J. Perelman that "the dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to starve anywhere. " After the requisite period of penury, Preston achieved a small success with the publication of Cities of Gold, a non-fiction book about Coronado's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. To research the book, Preston and a friend retraced on horseback 1,000 miles of Coronado's route across Arizona and New Mexico, packing their supplies and sleeping under the stars--nearly killing themselves in the process. Since then he has published several more non-fiction books o
