John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood were like Indiana Jones--except that they were real people rather than Hollywood fantasies, and William Carlsen tells their tale in Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Carlsen describes what these adventurers and archaeologists accomplished in the 1830s and 1840s, and also discusses the achievement of Maya civilization as well as why it vanished long ago.