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The Last Days of the Incas an incredibly clean and tight telling of the fall of the great Incan state. Goodreads

I recently finished Kim MacQuarrie's The Last Days of the Incas, and greatly enjoyed the entire experience. It has been a while since a book has pulled me in so thoroughly. This book falls squarely in the realm of pop-history, which permits it to be much more singular in its vision of telling a compelling tale of the toppling the great Inca Empire, the infighting of the conquistadors responsible for its demise, and the doomed guerilla resistance of Manco Inca and his sons.

It is honestly very hard to find things to discuss about this book, as it is an incredibly clean and polished endeavour from beginning to end. I would estimate the main thrust of the book, being roughly the discussion of topics surrounding the rebellion of the Neo-Inca state, takes up about 200-250 of the ~450 total pages of the book. The first 100 pages cover in relatively low detail the original conquest of the empire - the discovery of the Incas by the company of Pizarro and Almagro, the defeat and capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca, the march to Cusco, and the capture of the Incan Capital. One decision I found myself very appreciative of in this section is the broad strokes discussion of the military tactics. I, (and presumably most readers), care little about the precise details of the Spaniards immense effectiveness against native troops - MacQuarrie largely waves his hands here and says it is due to the superior technology of the Spaniards (in particular their armour), as well as the immense mobility enabled by the horses, an explanation I found to be entirely satisfactory. I also greatly enjoyed the discussion of the Atahualpa-Huascar Civil War - I felt like it also struck the perfect balance in giving sufficient detail for the reader to understand how Atahualpa was able to completely triumph over Huascar, without losing sight of the forest for the tress (a mistake that I find many history books tend to make).

I also found the tail ~100-150 pages of the book, discussing the expeditions of Hiram Bingham, Gene Savoy, and husband-wife duo Vince and Nancy Lee aiming to relocate the lost Neo-Incan capital of Vilcabamba to be very interesting, though not gripping in the same way as the discussion of the Incan period. In particular, the story of Gene Savoy's eccentricity (insanity?) was very entertaining. I did not know that Hiram Bingham was such an unreliable figure, or some of the ways (e.g. his failure to credit his friend and colleague Harry Foote for the discovery of shrine of Chuquipalta/Ñusta Ispana, his omission of the help and cues he recieved while in Peru, etc) which was very interesting and something I think is not often discussed.

All in all, I think Kim MacQuarrie's The Last Days of the Incas is an incredible book that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone even vaguely interested in the region.