Product Description

'A superb work of narrative history' Antonia Fraser

On 25 September 1513, a force of weary Spanish explorers cut through the forests of Panama and were confronted with an ocean: the Mar del Sur, or the Pacific Ocean. Six years later the Spaniards had established the town of Panama as a base from which to explore and exploit this unknown sea. It was the threshold of a vast expansion.

From the first small band of Spanish adventurers to enter the mighty Inca empire, to the execution of the last Inca forty years later, The Conquest of the Incas is a story of bloodshed, infamy, rebellion and extermination, told as convincingly as if it happened yesterday.

'It is a delight to praise a book of this quality which combines careful scholarship with sparkling narrative skill' Philip Magnus, Sunday Times

'A superbly vivid history' The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46113 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Review
"'A superb work of narrative history' Antonia Fraser; 'It is a delight to praise a book of this quality which combines careful scholarship with sparkling narrative skill' Philip Magnus, Sunday Times; 'A superbly vivid history' The Times"

About the Author

John Hemming was Director of the Royal Geographical Society in London from 1975 to 1996. and is the author of fourteen books. On publication, The Conquest of the Incas won the Robert Pitman Literary Prize and the Christopher Medal in New York.

Customer Reviews

The conquest of the incas
In the 1850's the first history of the conquest was written by an American called Prescott who collated over candlelight lost documents and letters sent back to Andalucia by the conquistadors. Hemming took over this forgotten history, writing it for our times. This is the modern version; fast moving, all action, easy to read and difficult to put down. If you enjoy adventure novels, take a look at real history. The Inca's surrendered to the Spanish was as amazing as it was fatalistic, their legends predicting the coming of the white gods. Their ruler Atahualpa surrendered himself to the Pizarros. The Spanish brothers greed for all the gold evident around them, led to them forcing the native people to fill a room full of gold as ransom for their ruler.Legend or fact? Gold crafted during that period remains rare in that country. Once completed, the brutish Pizarro brothers murdered the Inca after a mock trial. This story is reviewed well by Hemming, with all the gentleness of one side, all the harshness and greed in the other. It has all the elements required to facinate and revolt the reader, and only the reader can nominate his or her own hero. The conquest of Peru remains one of the most thrilling areas of adventure history, is pure escapism, and enough to get you on the plane out there!

Excellent
This book whilst historical is written in an easy to read style and is hard to put down. Excellent book and highly recommended to anyone wanting to get a feel of the story of the conquest of Peru.

A Landmark work of brilliance
The dream of almost every historian is surely to write a book that manages to match rigorous research with that easy writing style that makes your tome just as appealing to readers who prefer story-based fiction. It is something of a dark art and many have failed. John Hemming, though, has succeeded spectacularly.

Such was the obvious quality and scholarship of this book when it came out in the early 1970s that many experts believed that `John Hemming' was the pseudonym of a more established historian who was somehow taking a risk - and not the real name of a postgraduate student with a passion for Peru. This book does that rare thing of involving you so much in the epic story of the conquest - from the 168 incongruous Conquistadors who formed the kernel of the conquest 1532, all the way to the capture of Tupac Amaru forty years later - that you find that you have casually assimilated and retained a huge amount of fascinating information. In other words, it is what parents and teachers would love their children to read, as it seamlessly combines education with rollercoaster entertainment.

There are patches here that are not for the weak-hearted: slaughter and treachery abound; deceit is rife and on a monumental scale; and despite the author's immensely skilled efforts to keep the narrative balanced, you still find yourself inexorably rooting for one side against the other, hugely mismatched as they are. There is an immediacy in the breathless pace and monumental Andean backdrop that screams quality and which has you gripped. It had me doing something that I've never done to a history book before or since: I read it twice more.

To choose between this book and its most obvious companion - Kim MacQuarrie's more modern and equally good `Last Days of the Incas' - is perhaps not necessary. The minute you finish one, you'll just want to read the other, and perhaps secretly hope that second time round the outcome - somehow - will be different.

This is a magnificent achievement in historical research and natural story-telling that can truly be said to inspire.