From the first small band of Spanish adventurers to enter the mighty Inca empire to the execution of the last Inca forty years later, it is the story of bloodshed, infamy, rebellion, and extermination, told as convincingly as if it happened yesterday. It also tells the social impact of the conquest on ordinary Peruvians forced to work for Spanish masters or in hellish silver and mercury mines, on changes to religion and government, and how survivors of the Inca elite reacted to the new order." is an extraordinary book. In it, rigorous historical research and profound analysis combine with stylistic elegance to produce a work that conveys to us, in all its richness and diversity, the tragic and fabulous history of the Inca realm; and it is as delightful to read as the best novels."—Mario Vargas Lllosa, Peruvian, Nobel Laureate in Literature “Distinguished by an extraordinary empathy, a feeling of one’s way into the minds of the sixteenth-century Spaniards and Indians . . . Provocative.”—