The Last Days of the Incas [Paperback]

Kim MacQuarrie (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 17, 2008

In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed -- due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance.

Kim MacQuarrie lived in Peru for five years and became fascinated by the Incas and the history of the Spanish conquest. Drawing on both native and Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. MacQuarrie also relates the story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, of how Machu Picchu was discovered, and of how a trio of colorful American explorers only recently discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba, hidden for centuries in the Amazon.

This authoritative, exciting history is among the most powerful and important accounts of the culture of the South American Indians and the Spanish Conquest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. With vivid and energetic prose, Emmy Award–winner and author MacQuarrie (From the Andes to the Amazon) re-creates the 16th-century struggle for what would become modern-day Peru. The Incas ruled a 2,500–mile-long empire, but Spanish explorers, keen to enrich the crown and spread the Catholic Church, eventually destroyed Inca society. MacQuarrie, who writes with just the right amount of drama ("After the interpreter finished delivering the speech, silence once again gripped the square"), is to be commended for giving a balanced account of those events. This long and stylish book doesn't end with the final 1572 collapse of the Incas. Fast-forwarding to the 20th century, MacQuarrie tells the surprisingly fascinating story of scholars' evolving interpretations of Inca remains. In 1911, a young Yale professor of Latin American history named Hiram Bingham identified Machu Picchu as the nerve center of the empire. Few questioned Bingham's theory until after his death in 1956; in the 1960s Gene Savoy discovered the real Inca center of civilization, Vilcabamba. Although MacQuarrie dedicates just a few chapters to modern research, the archeologists who made the key discoveries emerge as well-developed characters, and the tale of digging up the empire is as riveting as the more familiar history of Spanish conquest. B&w illus., maps. (May 29)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The Incas were members of the group of Quechuan peoples of Peru, who established an empire from northern Ecuador to central Chile before the Spanish conquest. MacQuarrie reminds his readers that nearly 500 years ago, 168 Spaniards arrived in what is now Peru and collided with an Incan empire of 10 million people. The author, who lived in Peru for five years, chronicles the adventures of Hiram Bingham, who, in 1911, discovered Machu Picchu and believed it was the Incan capital. MacQuarrie also recounts the search by Gene Savoy, the American explorer who found Vicabamba, the true capital. He describes the adventures of other conquistadors and puppet kings, the rebellion of 1535, and other military attempts to conquer the Indians. MacQuarrie, a four-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, researched Spanish and Incan chronicles. The result is a first-rate reference work of ambitious scope that will most likely stand as the definitive account of these people. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 522 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743260503
• ISBN-13: 978-0743260503
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (123 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > History > Ancient > Incan
  • #4 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Peru
  • #4 in Books > History > Europe > Spain

More About the Author

Kim MacQuarrie is a writer, a four-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, and an anthropologist. He is the author of four books on Peru and lived in that country for five years. During that time, MacQuarrie lived with a recently-contacted tribe of indigenous Amazonians, called the Yora. It was MacQuarrie's experience filming a nearby group of indigenous people, whose ancestors still remembered their contacts with the Inca Empire, that ultimately led him to investigate and then to write his latest book, "The Last Days of the Incas."

A History Book Club and Military Book Club selection, the book was also chosen by the Kiriyama Prize Committee as a "notable book" for 2008 and as an "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice. Currently FX Channel is developing "The Last Days of the Incas" as a 13-part scripted television series. MacQuarrie is now at work on a book about a 4,500-mile journey, from Colombia to Tierra del Fuego, along the spine of the Andes. It will be published in 2014. Visit his website at: www.kimmacquarrie.com or his blog at www.lastdaysoftheincas.com/wordpress

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A rollercoaster read July 18, 2007

By S. Walshe

Format:Hardcover

Before I read this book, my knowledge of the Inca Empire was limited to a vague notion that they once had a great civilization that was quickly destroyed by a small bunch of Spaniards. I had no idea of the blood curdling drama that awaited me. Kim MacQuarrie's book is a riveting, thrill a minute tale written with such a skillful combination of high stakes immediacy and elegant restraint that I couldn't wait to get to the next chapter and on some occasions, (like when Manco Inca first mobilized the Incas into rebellion to name but one example), I had to remind myself to exhale. Right up to the end, I was willing the Incas to prevail, all the while knowing that their days were numbered. The fact that all the issues it so painstakingly and beautifully brings to the surface are scarily relevant to today's world does the book no disservice either. Read it.

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Captured by History June 19, 2007

By Dr. Betsy Hesser

Format:Hardcover

I absolutely loved this book. Everyone in my family loved this book. It is a rip-roaring adventure that explains an important piece of South American history in a way that captivates the attention at the same time that it makes that particular period in history understandable. How could a small group of illiterate Spanish explorers change the history of an empire of 10 million people? This book is a real-life example of the ideas proposed in the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Although I visited many of the important sites in Peru in which the story takes place a few years ago, I now want to return in order to see those places again from the vantage point of what I learned in "The Last Days of the Incas." This book makes history come alive and the lessons contained therein have relevance in today's world.

Dr. Betsy Hesser

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Page-turning history June 2, 2008

By Darin A. Leviloff

Format:Hardcover

12 years ago, motivated by a pictorial in National Geographic, I traveled to distant Peru. It was a fascinating journey, but after reading this book, I wished that I had it before I went (impossible, of course). I took it as a reverse travelogue, making sense of the places I had gone to and where they figured into the historical and exploratory narrative.

This book reads like a novel. In fact, I'd be surprised if it isn't ultimately converted into an HBO mini-series or the like. Interesting characters, from the puppet-turned-rebel Manco Inca, to the brash and vindicative Hernando Pizzaro, fill these pages and make them come to life. Revealed is an extra-ordinary account of the amazing conquest of a large and prosperous Empire by a small band of greedy Spanish outcasts.

Written in lucid prose, with numerous quotes, from Incas, Spaniards, and even outside philosophers, Kim MacQuarries does an excellent job of reaching out to the reader and creating a fascinating historical account. Well organized, the book even concludes with a complete description of the archeological work of the modern period associated with the recounted events and makes those almost as fascinating as the events themselves.

I couldn't recommend this book more highly.