This book is half search for the city and some historical and political context and half a theory of pandemics and disease affect on history.

Too much focus on historical pandemics that it then tries to connect with lost city with no actual evidence of that people the case. However the team then contracts Leishmaniasis which it then hypothesized was the reason the city was abandoned. It spends almost a 3rd of the book on this, only to then pose an expert who states it was so commonplace there is no way that is what happened.

It also uses a title for the book that he notes the indigenous people considered to be racist and disrespectful to their heritage. He later posits the thoughts of a single scientist (who doesn't even want his own name attached) that rape of indigenous people by Europeans is why those indigenous groups were able to survive.