Customer Reviews

The Last of the Incas: The Rise and Fall of an American Empire

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I read this while travelling in ecuador and couldn't part with it. It was quick enough to not get bogged down in details. It gave a brief history of the inca empire, and then analyzed its downfall in greater detail.

The insights I gained from reading this book helped me to gain a greater understanding of Latin American culture. The societal structure of Latin America before the conquistadors came and its subsequent disintegration help an American to understand why Latin America sometimes seems so chaotic and backwards.

It was the first book on the Incas whose message really stuck with me.

This book is hilarious. Purchased for $1 at a book sale I got at least 3 hours of laughs out of it. Aside from the flimsy arguments and self-defeating prose the authors basically concede that they have nothing to work with.

All this is amusing. But the fact they are apologists for Stalin is the only reason to pick up this counter-factual drivel. Attacks on private property and wage slaves abound. The Incas and their Socialist paradise were apparently a beacon in the New World. Which may be true. They didn't eat people with the gusto of the Aztecs.

The claims about the Inca people )just like the Soviets) freely giving their time and lives to work on public projects for the greater good are shocking and unbelievable. He is clearly defending the White Sea Canal, Chinese Great Leap Forward and other grave crimes against humanity.

Suffice it to say the vigorous laughter which these outrageous clown authors evoked in 2008 would not have been merited when it was written in 1963.