In 1572 the Spanish sacked Vilcabamba, the last Inca stronghold, and the city was rapidly overtaken by the jungle, receding for hundreds of years into legend and myth. This is the story of how Vilcabamba was founded and how the Incas held out against the Spanish for over 30 years in a savage guerrilla war. Hundreds of years later, at the turn of this century an American explorer, Hiram Bingham, stumbled on the ruins of Machu Pichu and announced to the world that he had found Vilcabamba, the lost city of the Incas. For fifty years the academic world agreed with him until in 1967 another American explorer discovered the real Vilcabamba...This is the biography of a city - through history, myth, legend, literature, exploration and archaeology.

About the Author

Kim MacQuarrie is a writer and filmmaker and fellow of the New York Explorers Club who has lived in Peru for over five years. MacQuarrie has made three films on the Peruvian Amazon in the region of Vilcabamba, including 'Spirits of the Rainforest', an Emmy-winning documentary.

Reviews

An Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and contributing author to photographic books, MacQuarrie (From the Andes to the Amazon) now offers a thorough exploration of Incan history, from first contact with Europeans in 1526 to the rediscovery of buried Incan historical artifacts to 2005. The story of the downfall and rediscovery of the Incan Empire is revealed by following the footsteps of influential individuals in the history of interactions between the Incan civilization and Europeans. For example, MacQuarrie begins with an account of explorers rediscovering the abandoned Incan city of Machu Picchu in 1911. Repeatedly, he uses correspondence between Europeans exploring the Incan civilization and their contacts in Europe to demonstrate perceptions held of Incan people during the time period. Throughout, numerous illustrations and maps enhance MacQuarrie's insights. This highly detailed, extremely readable work is appropriate for academic and larger public libraries.-Kristin Whitehair, Kansas State Univ., Manhattan Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

'A welcome addition to the literature ... Lively and dramtic' WASHINGTON POST 'Fascinating and enthralling ... Truly a work worth Inca gold' HISTORY MAGAZINE 'The Last Days of the Incas surprises, delivers history, and reads like a great yarn. I've read yards of books on the Incas but this one took me out of the classroom and into that long-lost world.' Keith Bellows, Editor in Chief, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER

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 2007 Reed Business Information.