![]() ![]() There are a few quirks about MacQuarrie's style I could have done without, however. I'm glad to say this hefty tome (wait for the paperback - it'll be easier to handle and much cheaper) is very readable for its depth. I think we all know the ending, but in this book there is enough detail by far to satisfy anyone interested in this history, and having gone to Peru a few years ago I count myself as one. ![]() ![]() Thus you get the Conquistadors - never more than two hundred of them for their first few years - against the might of the fresh, powerful, rich and exceedingly well organised Inca empire. Give them all egos, flaws, ignorance of how best to go about things, but some outstanding fortune against huge odds when it came to battle, and stir. Take some money-grabbing Spaniard empire builders - mostly the unskilled, uneducated and unwashed merely chancing their arm for the odd fortune or two - and plant them, and their smallpox, in one of the brightest, gold-enhanced civilisations the world had ever seen. ![]() Summary: Machu Picchu was never the lost capital of the Incan empire - that was Vilcabamba - and indeed hardly features in this very readable history of what happened after the Conquistadors arrived. ![]()
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