INCA EMPIRE: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in October 2024 by Hourly History.

Hourly History has published a large catalog of short histories and biographies. The idea is that each book can be read in about an hour. That's not enough to make the reader an expert, but it is enough to make the reader more knowledgeable than most people and it lets the reader know if this is a topic they want to delve into more deeply.

I thought I was pretty well-informed on the topic of the Incas when I started Inca Empire: A History from Beginning to End. I am a Spanish and a history teacher, so I know way more than most people. However, that's not saying much. Let's face it, the average American hasn't heard of the Incas and the ones that have are likely to confuse them with the Aztecs or the Maya.

A short history is not much of a problem when it comes to the Incas. Their Empire existed for only about 95 years before the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in 1532. The Spanish arrived with small numbers (less than 200 soldiers) but superior technology, including horses, a cannon, firearms, and armor. 

A strength of the Incan Empire also led to its downfall. The Inca understood the value of a dependable highway system to move goods, information, and troops. Unfortunately, European diseases spread to the heart of the empire before the Spanish even arrived. The emperor and his designated heir probably died from diseases brought from Europe, kicking off a brutal civil war that meant the empire was ill-equipped to meet a foreign threat, even a tiny one.

Until I read this short history, I was completely unaware that a rump Incan state survived the original conquest and continued on for another 35 years on the Eastern slopes of the Andes and into the Amazon basin.

Map by QQuantum

My review:

This e-book was in serious need of MAPS. It kept of referring to pre-Colombian locations and civilizations I had never heard of and that meant that I had no real idea of the geography of the relative locations. They might as well have been telling me that Group A took over Group B, Group B rebelled and then Group A destroyed Group B city and Group B stopped fighting. 

A MAP would have helped. 5 or 6 MAPS would have been very enlightening. I have included a helpful map that I lifted from Wikipedia. Just seeing the growth of the empire on this map gives the reader a better idea of the extent of the Incan Empire and how quickly it grew. Kindle can easily handle pictures, so not including a map is inexcusable.

The lack of any sort of map is why I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Inca Empire: A History from Beginning to End.

THE RECOVERY AGENT: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Janet Evanovich

 

Published in 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Read by Lorelei King
Duration: 7 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Janet Evanovich's The Recovery Agent features Gabriela Rose. Recovery agents can be another term for bounty hunters who look for fugitives, but Gabriela Rose is not a bounty hunter. She searches for missing property. Sometimes it's insurance fraud, sometimes it's stolen property and sometimes it's just looking for something rare for a wealthy client. She is based in New York City, is quite successful and flies all over the world recovering items. 

Gabriela Rose is dismayed to hear that her hometown in North Carolina has suffered a direct hit from a hurricane and (somehow) won't get any help from FEMA or any other government recovery program. The town is dying but Gabriela's grandmother knows where a fortune might be found. She was somehow told about the fortune by the ghost of her dead grandmother. In that fortune there is a ring called the Seal of Solomon. This ring is mostly in Arabic language legends about King Solomon of Israel who could use it to talk to animals and to control demons and djinn (genies).

Most of the book is a hunt to find and keep the ring in various settings with an ongoing simmering romance on the side. Readers familiar with the 1980s movie Romancing the Stone or the 2022 movie The Lost City will get the idea - except this book has competent protagonists.

My review:

This book is just all over the place, literally. There are 5 different trips to 4 different countries with jungles to find this ring. It gets old.

*****caution: spoilers*****

The goal of all of this searching is to find a treasure to save the town. Time after time the main characters leave behind literal fortunes of common, run of the mill gold trinkets, jewel-encrusted necklaces, statues, and at least one other famous golden item that would certainly have saved the town. 

There are other issues as well. Evanovich loves to name drop products in her books - pistols, boats, cars and more are named by brand. At one point, there is a planned attack on a compound. Gabriela Rose goes into battle with a fully automatic machine gun wearing a $465 La Perla Balconette bra (the price is mentioned). We know what bra she is wearing because at one point her bra is used as a tourniquet. Who wears a $465 lacy push-up bra into battle and not a sports bra? Sure, it made for a funny scene in the book, but it makes no sense - especially when she goes to a Target later on and buys common everyday underclothing and makes comments about how great they are.

*****end spoilers*****

What is good in the book is interesting supporting characters throughout the book.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE RECOVERY AGENT: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Janet Evanovich.

THE BRIDGE of SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder

 

Originally published in 1927.
Winner of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize.

This book has been on my To-Be-Read list since I was in high school. One of my English teachers back in high school used to talk about The Bridge of San Luis Rey quite a lot and I finally got around to reading it.

Synopsis:

The setting is Peru, back when Spain held it as a colony. Outside of Lima in the Andes Mountains there is a magnificent rope bridge for pedestrians. Baggage and animals take a long trail they take down to the river below and they cross a traditional bridge that takes a lot longer. One day the rope bridge breaks and several people fall to their deaths. 

A monk is approaching the rope bridge and sees it break and everyone fall to their deaths. He decides to investigate the lives of each person who fell. He wants to see if there is something in common - perhaps they were all adulterers or thieves or the like?

What follows are elaborate character sketches for each of the victims all ending with them walking across the bridge.

My review:

These character sketches are tedious to read. This is not a long book (123 pages), but I felt like about half of it could've been edited away and it would have only made the book better. I know that is a sign of age - the book is 93 years old and I am not the generation the book was written for. I nearly didn't finish it.  I hate to break it to my English teacher but I didn't find the book very memorable.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BRIDGE of SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder.

ARCHAEOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION to the WORLD'S GREATEST SITES (audiobook) by Eric H. Cline

 

Published in 2016 by The Great Courses.

Read by the author, Eric H. Cline.

Duration: 12 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.

Eric H. Cline is a well-respected and highly experienced archaeologist who is a professor at George Washington University. He has excavated at several sites for a total of 30 seasons, doing everything from being an inexperienced newbie to being Co-Director of well-established sites.

Turns out that Cline is also a very likable guy who does a good job of explaining archaeological techniques. He tells about a number of sites that he worked on and some of the most famous digs in history (King Tut's tomb, Troy) in the first half of the book. It was a bit frustrating for me because they were all within 100 miles of the Mediterranean Sea. 

In the second half of the book, Cline tells about other digs around the world - Machu Pichu, the Terracotta soldiers, Teotihuacan and more. 

On the whole, this was a pleasant if not particularly riveting listen as an audiobook. I rate it 4 stars out of 5.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: ARCHAEOLOGY:  AN INTRODUCTION to the WORLD'S GREATEST SITES (audiobook) by Eric H. Cline.

SIMON BOLIVAR: THE GREAT LIBERATOR (World Landmark Series) by Arnold Whitridge

Published in 1954 by Random House.

In the 1950's and 1960's Random House created an extraordinary history series for children called Landmark Books. There were 122 books in the American history series and 63 in the World Landmark series. A very solid description of the series can be found here: link. When I was a kid my little hometown library had what seemed like an endless shelf of these books. I loved these books - I even remember where it was in the library nearly 40 years later! Undoubtedly, these books are part of the reason I am a history teacher.

Simon Bolivar (1783-1830)

This book is part of a subset of the Landmark Books series. If the book took place outside of the United States the book belonged to the World Landmark Books series.

Simon Bolivar was born in the Spanish colony that is now Venezuela. He was educated in Spain but was keenly aware that the government of Spain considered the colonies to be inferior to Spain and incapable of self-government. He doubtless shared that belief until he began to spend time with the children of the Spanish ruling class (including the future King of Spain) and discovered that they weren't all that impressive. Once Napoleon conquered Spain and put his brother on the throne, Bolivar pushed for a revolt. Some, like Bolivar, were pushing for independence no matter who was on the throne, but others who joined him simply wanted to revolt as a part of a general resistance to Napoleonic rule.

Regardless of the initial motivations, Bolivar soon led a multi-colony revolt that went on for 11 years. Eventually, Bolivar helped to liberate the colonies that make up the modern countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

Many have compared Bolivar to George Washington, including Arnold Whitridge, the author of this book. There are surface similarities, but Bolivar's fight was much longer and (I would say) much more of a geographical challenge. Bolivar crossed the Andes range multiple times with armies that suffered horrific losses simply from the geography. In fact, while doing a bit of research on Bolivar while writing this review, I found that the Wikipedia page for Bolivar does a much better job of stating the sheer monumental scope of his accomplishments than this book did. For example, he fought in 79 major battles, traveled 10 times the distance of Hannibal, 3 times the distance of Napoleon and twice the distance of Alexander the Great. If you can be can be compared favorably to that crowd, you are truly a military genius. In this respect, Washington certainly comes up short.

Sadly, Bolivar was not a political genius and he could never figure out a way to unite the former Spanish colonies into one large country that he wanted to call Gran Colombia. This is where Washington's strengths come into play. Not only was he able to win the military fight, he was able to help establish the concept that the colonies were going to become one country and the military would not lead that country.

This book is aimed at students from 3rd to 8th grade. It is a simple read with line drawings. It could use a few more maps. To be fair, it was merely an "okay" introduction to Simon Bolivar and his accomplishments (see above about the Wikipedia page).

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SIMON BOLIVAR: THE GREAT LIBERATOR (World Landmark Series) by Arnold Whitridge.