The Last Days of the Incas

Half a millennium ago, a small group of Spaniards tricked, manipulated, and murdered their way to total domination over the Peruvian Incas. In his thrillingly informative The Last Days of the Incas, Kim MacQuarrie relates how, with the help of metal weapons, artillery, disease, and horses (”the mobile tanks of the conquest”), the Spanish subdued a native populace despite being outnumbered nearly 10,000 to 1. In addition to writing rousing and clear-eyed battle accounts and describing the Incas’ early form of guerrilla warfare, MacQuarrie also manages to spin the oft-told story of the discovery of Machu Picchu into narrative gold. A-