Peru

Birds of Peru (Princeton Field Guides)

Nearly eighteen hundred different bird species--one fifth of the world's birds--have been recorded in Peru. Birds of Peru is the most complete and well-researched field guide to this rich and fascinating diversity. It illustrates every one of the 1,792 species and shows the distinct plumages of each. It includes 304 superb, high-quality color plates directly opposite concise descriptions and color distribution maps, making it much easier to use in the field than standard neotropical field guides. The detailed text discusses key identification features, status, distribution, and vocalizations for all species, and many subspecies.

This field guide enables users to identify all species found in Peru, and is also useful throughout much of western South America, particularly southeastern Colombia, southern Ecuador, western Brazil, Bolivia, and northern Chile.

Birds of Peru is an indispensable resource for birdwatchers, biologists, naturalists, and conservationists working or traveling in Peru and South America.

• The most complete and well-researched field guide to the 1,792 species of birds found in Peru
• 304 superb, high-quality color plates directly opposite concise descriptions and full-color distribution maps for quick reference and easy identification
• Distinct plumages, subspecies, sexes, age classes, and morphs fully illustrated
• Detailed text discusses key identification features, status, distribution, and vocalizations
• Designed especially for field use-compact, portable, and user-friendly

The Last Days of the Incas

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.

The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (The Latin America Readers)

Sixteenth-century Spanish soldiers described Peru as a land filled with gold and silver, a place of untold wealth. Nineteenth-century travelers wrote of soaring Andean peaks plunging into luxuriant Amazonian canyons of orchids, pythons, and jaguars. The early-twentieth-century American adventurer Hiram Bingham told of the raging rivers and the wild jungles he traversed on his way to rediscovering the “Lost City of the Incas,” Machu Picchu. Seventy years later, news crews from ABC and CBS traveled to Peru to report on merciless terrorists, starving peasants, and Colombian drug runners in the “white gold” rush of the coca trade. As often as not, Peru has been portrayed in broad extremes: as the land of the richest treasures, the bloodiest conquest, the most poignant ballads, and the most violent revolutionaries. This revised and updated second edition of the bestselling Peru Reader offers a deeper understanding of the complex country that lies behind these claims.

Unparalleled in scope, the volume covers Peru’s history from its extraordinary pre-Columbian civilizations to its citizens’ twenty-first-century struggles to achieve dignity and justice in a multicultural nation where Andean, African, Amazonian, Asian, and European traditions meet. The collection presents a vast array of essays, folklore, historical documents, poetry, songs, short stories, autobiographical accounts, and photographs. Works by contemporary Peruvian intellectuals and politicians appear alongside accounts of those whose voices are less often heard—peasants, street vendors, maids, Amazonian Indians, and African-Peruvians. Including some of the most insightful pieces of Western journalism and scholarship about Peru, the selections provide the traveler and specialist alike with a thorough introduction to the country’s astonishing past and challenging present.

Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press)

Andean Awakening: An Inca Guide to Mystical Peru

It is an extraordinary time to be alive, as a long-foretold alignment of the Earth with the axis of the Milky Way galaxy announces a new dawn. In Peru, descendants of the Inca call this time the Pachakuti, 'the return of the light' after 500 years of darkness. Peru is said to be the "morning of the new sun" - the portal through which rays of the new light will begin to awaken humanity to a new consciousness.In this illustrated guidebook, Peru's premiere spiritual tour guide, Jorge Delgado, takes the reader on a trip of discovery through the most powerful and mystical places on earth - Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Lake Titicaca and the magical Inca doorway of Aramu Muru.Jorge Delgado was born in a small Andean village in Peru. In Andean Awakening Delgado opens the door to his mystical homeland as he describes his own journey of awakening and packs his personal narrative with fascinating details about Peru, its history, culture, mythos and magic. Delgado is our personal Quechua - a bridge person who helps others to cross from one state of conscious to another. Delgado bridges readers to the spiritual power of the Andes, of Peru and legend of the Inca - the return of the children of the light.

The Incas (Peoples of America)

The great empire of the Incas at its height encompassed an area of western South America comparable in size to the Roman Empire in Europe. This book describes and explains its extraordinary progress from a remote Andean settlement near Lake Titicaca to its rapid demise six centuries later at the hands of the Spanish conquerors.

• A bold new history by the world's leading expert on Incan civilization.
  
• Covers the entire Andean region, five countries and ten million people.
  
• Heavily illustrated with maps, figures, and photographs.

The Angry Aztecs and the Incredible Incas (Horrible Histories Collections)

The Incas and Their Ancestors: The Archaeology of Peru (Revised Edition)

In 1532, when Pizarro conquered Peru, the Inca realm was one of the largest empires on earth, graced by gold masterpieces, towns with great palaces and temples, and an impressive network of roads. But this glittering culture only obscured the rich and diverse civilizations that had preceded it: Chavin, Moche, Nazca, Tiwanaku, Huari, and Chimú. Described as a "masterly study" and an "outstanding volume" on its first publication, The Incas and Their Ancestors quickly established itself as the best general introduction to the cultures and civilizations of ancient Peru. Now this classic text has been fully updated for the revised edition. New discoveries over the last decade are integrated throughout. The occupation of Peru's desert coast can now be traced back to 12,000 BC and ensuing maritime adaptations are examined in early littoral societies that mummified their dead and others that were mound builders. The spread of Andean agriculture is related to fresh data on climate, and protracted drought is identified as a recurrent contributor to the rise and fall of civilizations in the Cordillera. The results of recent excavations enliven understanding of coastal Moche and Nazca societies and the ancient highland states of Huari and Tiwanaku. Architectural models accompanying burials provide fresh interpretations of the palaces of imperial Chan Chan, while the origins of the Incas are given new clarity by a spate of modern research on America's largest native empire. 225 b/w illustrations.

The Ancient Kingdoms of Peru

The Rivers Ran East: Travelers' Tales Classics