Lost Continents - The Atlantis Theme in History, Science and Literature
Now this was an enjoyable read, in which the author, formidably well read with hundreds if not thousands sources, discusses the intent of Platos' Atlantis, and then gives a rundown of all the expeditions that sought to place it on a map, why it can't be placed on a map, arguing not just from history but from geology, geography, literature and myth.
I mean, he's right, but this is an imaginary place used by Plato to advance his theory of a golden age fallen into decline, but - for an imaginary place it's had an outsized influence on history.
Named in the book are Blavtsky, Manly P Hall, Edgary Cayce, Percy Fawcett, Bulwer Lytton, - amongst countless others, and the argued precursors to Atlantis Mu, Lemuria, Mt Shasta, - Atlantis - for an imaginary place - has a large citizenry and distinguished geological history, which de Camp dryly - and drolly - narrates and explains. This is important, because Atlantis, as a place that exists solely in the unfettered human imagination, is one of the hotbeds of "New Thought", and it becomes an atlas, as it were, of all that new aged flapdoodle and balderdash that people care to deposit there.
A few of the more interesting things and people I came across:
- The Glozel Artifacts
- Hanns Horbiger's Welteislehre theory
- James Churchward's Mu
- Jean-Frédéric Waldeck (Artist, Explorer, Pornographer...)
- Guy Warren Ballard
- Ignatius T.T. Donnelly
- Ziusrudra
- Edgar Lucien Larkin
- R. Swinburne Clymer
- W. Scott Elliot
- Pierre Benoit - "Each of Benoit's novels consist of exactly 227 pages and have the heroine's name begin with the letter "A""
- 'Count' Byron Khun de Prorok
I could go on. The entire book should be a Wikipedia article, with every named character and place a hyperlink that leads you down another rabbit hole, and de Camp drolly sums up the essential flavour of the characters and places and underlying ideas.
Five Stars.