[3][2] In 1999-2000, while at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he was awarded a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, for Arabic studies and narrative writing.
The San Francisco Chronicle called it "Avatar for grown-ups” and praised the book for being “expertly told: perfectly timed, thoroughly researched and descriptively written.
[10][11] Between Man and Beast (Doubleday 2013) tells the story of Paul Du Chaillu, a young 19th century explorer who emerged from expeditions in Africa with the first specimens of the gorilla – an animal that previously was the subject of myth and legend.
Du Chaillu’s adventures, both in the jungle and in the showrooms of Europe and the United States, coincided with the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and they helped ignite the evolution debate.
In a pre-publication review, Publishers Weekly wrote that “this exemplary work provides a wholly satisfying take on a central chapter of the Cold War – a dramatic story of zeal and adventure.”[16] In 2018, Monte Reel lived in Buenos Aires with his wife and daughter.