Fans pick 100 books like The Atlantis Syndrome

As part of my “fifty sites project” for another book, I visited the best-known Native American earthwork sites in the American Midwest including: precisely crafted conical burial mounds; enormous, flat-topped “platform mounds;” embanked enclosures; and remarkable effigies in the shapes of birds, bears, and snakes. I was awed by their beauty and sophistication, but, sadly, settlers did not always view them as the work of Native People. Prolific author Jason Colavito conducts a deep dive into the racist roots of the myth of a “lost race” of ancient inhabitants of America who were claimed by some to have built those earthworks. Colavito brilliantly deconstructs the myth of a lost race of mound builders and gives due credit to the true authors of those earthworks, America’s Native People.

Peeling back the stratigraphic layers of archaeology’s history, self-described “weirdshitologist,” archaeologist Jeb Card, reveals the discipline’s very “spooky” foundations in this riveting book. These foundations included a belief in a mythic time that preceded our modern world which has left behind its spoor in the form of eerie and phantasmagorical archaeological sites imbued with evil spirits, elves, pixies, djinn, elementals, and other paranormal entities. Card discusses haunted landscapes, bloodthirsty Druids, cursed mummies, and Lovecraftian “Old Ones” in his romp through all that is weird, strange, and, indeed, spooky in archaeology. Finally, Card shows that archaeology as presented on cable TV, YouTube videos, blogs, and social media is still haunted by the specter of Victorian Age beliefs about humanity’s presumably spooky past.

Dighton Rock in Massachusetts is covered in incised images, some in geometric patterns, others in the shape of animals, and others still depicting human-like figures. It’s fascinating and, like many before me, when I saw it I wondered about the meaning and origin of that rock writing. As soon as European settlers encountered the artifact in the seventeenth century, they vigorously contested its origins. Some claimed the highly eroded markings reflected an assortment of Old World languages including Phoenician and Norse. Others asserted that its message recorded the presence of Portuguese explorers in the early 1500s. Author Douglas Hunter shines an investigative light on Dighton Rock, masterfully debunking all of these speculations, proving the rock’s messages should be credited to the Native People of New England.

I was only 9 or 10 years old when I first saw the Cardiff Giant at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York. I was enthralled by the recumbent ten-foot tall stone man and his story continues to fascinate me. Though it pales in comparison to the famous Piltdown Man fraud in terms of its longevity and archaeological significance, as Scott Tribble shows in his informative and entertaining book, the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869 was much funnier. Deemed by some to be the remains of a biblical giant, thousands of dollars were made from its exhibition until a cigar manufacturer in Binghamton, New York admitted to crafting it. P.T. Barnum tried to buy it. Mark Twain penned a short story about it. And Scott Tribble wrote this marvelous book about it.

Atlantis is another fabled island-nation, with a history that goes back much further in time than Utopia. The powerful island-nation is mentioned by Greek philosopher Plato as an antagonist to mighty Athens. There are a handful of theories about whether Atlantis ever existed (some claim Plato made it all up). If it did exist, what was the location before it sank below the waves?

Gavin Menzies takes up one of the real location theories in this fascinating book: that Atlantis was part of the advanced Minoan civilisation that extended from its Mediterranean base on Crete to locations much further afield. Since this all took place three millenniums ago, hard to prove anything, although Gavin Menzies tries his best with unearthed artifacts and DNA evidence to persuade the reader as to the veracity of his findings. Perhaps you should read this tale with a pinch of salt? It is about… show more.

Mark Adams is simply a delightful writer. In this book, he dares to ask the age-old question: did Atlantis actually exist? He sifts through the facts and the fiction, taking the reader with him in his traipse across the globe to find answers. Like his other books, Meet Me in Atlantis is a fun read, where you’ll learn a lot and have some laughs along way.

This is a great story that mixes high fantasy tropes with modern noir. Rune St John is an impoverished aristocrat in New Atlantis and makes his living performing errands for his powerful sponsor. When Rune takes on a missing person’s case, he exposes a conspiracy linked to the fall of his family.

I love this book as it’s got great characters, snappy dialogue (especially when Rune banters with his foster brother Brand), and unique world-building. I enjoyed how Rune’s quest to reclaim his heritage is explored in subsequent books, with secrets introduced in this book having a payoff later in the trilogy.

Nia's lifelong dream is to become an avatar, one of the ruling mermaids of Atlantis. But when she is passed over for the opportunity, she must embark on a quest to prove herself. This journey takes her far beyond the sea and everything she knows to the world of dry land. Arthurian legends, mermaids, magic, Atlantis, a heroine’s journey – how can you go wrong?

There have been many descriptions of Atlantis published before, but very few have been written by someone who has actually been there, via psychic time travel, or at least via a series of dreams inspired by Atlantean stone furniture in Bolivia.

Fortunately, Walter F. Laredo has left us just such a book, and if he sometimes plays coy (maybe it was all just a dream???), he wonderfully includes an appendix of technical schematics of Atlantean inventions (bionic eyes, “chemical laser” beams) alongside full-color paintings of Atlantean architecture and the occasional nude Atlantean woman.

Though this is a pseudo archaeological work, Donnelly's theories remain the source of many of our modern-day ideas about Atlantis. Written in 1882, at a time when much of the world was still mysterious to Westerners, Donnelly proposed an argument that all cultures and peoples originated from Atlantis, which he claimed was destroyed during the Great Deluge described in the Book of Genesis. Today, in the 21st century, experts have debunked most of his theories. However, many of the questions he raised remain unanswered. Despite its many flaws, it’s an interesting glimpse into Western thought during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.