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Jane Kurtz enriches this Inca folktale with details of pre-Colonial Incan life, creating a book which will find enthusiastic audiences among those choosing books for pleasure and teachers and students studying the Inca, as well. The author's beautiful prose is enhanced by David Frampton's richly hued woodcuts, creating a memorable story of a strong heroine in a lost culture

this book should never have been taken from us......the gov't took this book out of print!!back in the 70's...and we think we live in a democracy...freedom to read a book or the right to speak our mind as well as the right to cultivate ANY seed has been taken from us.......the Coca plant is also a "seed bearing plant"..and the Bible says that God gave us those plants and that we should nurture them and sow them .....there was no distinction as to what seeds were good and what were bad!...It is man that abuses the substances..and harms others...

After visiting Peru this summer, I was compelled to learn more about the fascinating Inca culture. This book, which was written in the late 1500's by the son of a Spanish Conquistedor and Inca Princess is a priceless account of the rise and fall of the Inca empire. Written with the lyrical quality of reminiciant of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, the book is a real page turner. The culture is full of prophecies that eventually, (and regrettably) came true, from the division of the empire by two brother kings to the eventual defeat and rape of the land by the Spanish. The Incas developed a magical culture, moving large stones and errecting beautiful cities without the use of horses or pullies, and passing stories of their past without the benefit of a written language. A must read for anyone interested in the native history of the Americas.

I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE UP YOUR TIME SO HERE IT IS IN 2 WORDS EXELENT GOOD. HOPE YOU BUY IT AND ENJOY IT. IT IS A GOOD BOOK. BUY!

Enlightening book for any Inca Initiate

While this work does not provide absolute or concrete evidence, it does contain enough documented information that a very small leap of faith in the thought process of the Andean populations present in pre-Columbian SA will convince you of the truth of Mr. Sullivan's meritous effort.
Numerous reviews refer to this as an alternate history work, however off hand there is nothing I remember about it necessarily contradicting accepted history. Mr. Sullivan provides diagrams and star charts (which I later verified w/my own software) to solidify his claims. His years of research paid off with a in my opinion a viable answer to one of history's most difficult-to-answer questions. A definate must buy if you are interested in archaeoastronomy or just an extremely interesting read.

William Sullivan has presented me with one of the most convincing "alternate history" books I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Building upon the theories first explored in the landmark "Hamlet's Mill" by De Santillana and von Dechend, Mr. Sullivan takes what little is known about the history of the Incas and the Andean peoples and helps those interested make sense of it all. Thankfully, "The Secret of the Incas" is written in a much more digestable manner than "Hamlet's Mill".

The Inca Empire peaked for a brief moment and was then crushed by the invading Spanish in a very short period of time. There have been many theories as to how the Spanish were able to conquer most of the South American continent in such a brisk stroke, one of which involves the natives mistaking the invaders for "gods". The facts presented by Sullivan point to an even more mind-boggling fate.

The Andean peoples (and the Incas who followed) were convinced that their fate was intertwined with the movements of the stars and planets. Astrology, as the Andean people interpreted it, was an unalterable fate, as impossible to deny as the need of air to breathe. These beliefs incorporated everything from their historical writings to their political attitudes towards their neighbors.

Mr. Sullivan has impressed me with his interpretations of Andean thought. His work is conservative and he checks and re-checks his conclusions well. I had a lot of fun reading his theories, although some sections seemed to drag a little. His ending thoughts on "how" the Andean people might have originally become so obsessed with astrological readings and their terrestrial consequences are not so great, and I skimmed the last chapter which dealt with "chaos theory" and the like. He's not the first author who's gone off on a tangent to conclude a theoretical book though; I'll just pretend I didn't read those sections, haha.

"The Secret of the Incas" is a concise, well-presented book and I would recommend it VERY highly to those searching for "alternative" history books that don't insult the reader.

William Sullivan decodes the myths of the Incas.

Secrets of the Incas chronicles how Dr Sullivan first learned to decode ancient Andean myths. These myths - which were recorded by the Spanish at the time of their conquest of the Incas - are, according to Dr Sullivan, a 'message in a bottle' from the Incas to future generations. Dr Sullivan describes how he decoded the myths and how this led him to certain important dates in Andean prehistory and history. A glossary defines and explains various Andean mythological and historical terms, and a timeline shows what Dr Sullivan believes to be the correspondence between mythological, astronomical and archaeological events in the high Andes - how, in effect, what was happening in the heavens was mirrored by what was happening on Earth

On the evening of 15 November 1532, a band of 175 hardened Spanish adventurers crossed a pass in the high Andes. Looking down upon a broad, fertile valley in northern Peru, they became the first Europeans to make contact with the Incas, whose highly developed empire stretched 3,000 miles from Chile to Colombia and had a population of six million. On the following day, in what ranks as one of the strangest events in all recorded history, the Spaniards managed to seize the Inca king Atahuallpa and, in the ensuing panic, used the advantage of their 120 warhorses to kill and wound 10,000 Inca warriors. From that day onward, through luck and guile, and with reinforcements soon pouring in from Panama, the Spaniards - who came in search of gold and glory, in the name of the Roman Catholic Church - never relinquished the edge they seized in that first fateful encounter.

What the Spaniards never knew, and what history does not record, was the reason for the apparently inexplicable collapse of the greatest land empire on the face of the Earth.

Secrets of the Incas explores the baffling and tragic vulnerability of the Inca empire and comes to a startling conclusion: the Spanish had appeared at precisely the right place and at just the right time to fulfil an ancient, astronomically based prophecy of doom.

This conclusion is the result of two decades of research by American scholar Dr William Sullivan into the sophisticated astronomical knowledge of the Incas and how they encrypted this in their myths. Secrets of the Incas presents completely new evidence taken from an Inca myth. In this, Dr William Sullivan believes, lies the key to the basis of the old man's prophecy and, indeed, to the formation of the Inca empire itself. This myth is nothing less than a dire warning of an impending precessional event that, to the Incas, predicted future ruin.

The 'gate' or 'bridge' to the land of the ancestors - that is, the rising of the December solstice Sun with the Milky Way - was about to be washed away. Drawing on their ancient mythological database, the Incas reasoned - from the principle 'as above, so below' - that loss of contact with the ancestors, upon which their religious beliefs were founded, would mean their way of life would be destroyed on Earth.

It was this prophecy that stirred the first Inca emperor to action: if time was merciless, it had to be stopped. So the entire Inca empire, which was less than a century old when the Spanish arrived, became involved in an attempt at cosmic regulation - to change the course of the stars by changing the course of human history on Earth: 'as below, so above.'

William Sullivan decodes the myths of the Incas to reveal an astoundingly precise record of astronomical events. The Incas accepted their fate as written in the stars.

I love all Sitchin's books but I am very cautious about his theories, since he's made very unscientific claims about languages before and he is suspiciously quiet about the later history of his postulated "12th" planet Nibiru that supposedly caused the end of the last ice age and is supposed to come close to the earth every 3600 years. According to his chronology, Nibiru should have passed the earth in 100BC, but there is no historical record of any such thing, nor is there evidence of geological upheavals at that time. None of the info in this book is origibal either, I have seen it all before in the work of Robert Bauva, Erich von Daniken and many others. But still an entertaining read.

This was the first of Sitchen's books that I read, and I immediately bought the rest of The Earth Chronicles and read them all. While I do not agree with all of Sitchen's interpretations of the historical information presented, I now know that my North American Euro-centric education about world history is mostly garbage. We are taught in grammer and secondary school that if the white Europeans didn't do something or discover something, it just didn't happen. Well, we are wrong.

I am a practicing attorney in Washington, D.C., and consider myself to be a skeptic. But I am a widely read skeptic. Sitchen's book The Lost Realms has opened new doors for the study of history for me.

Buy the book and read it. You will never think the same about our history again.

There are many pieces of the puzzle of our existence in the universe that I had figured out, or "seen", but there were still dots that I could not connect, gaps I could not fill in. When I read this book it was like deja vu, a recollection of things stored in our genetic memory/code long forgotten through evolution, now recalled causing gasps of recollection. This book logically and scientifically filled in the gaps. It makes sense, it all fits. Sitchin's bibliography to support his research is tremendously extensive and impressive. I recommend it highly for the searching mind, and have given copies as gifts to many friends and associates.

I generally don't waste my time on alternate historical fiction because I want to learn about real historical events in the context of entertaining fiction. But because I had a prior knowledge of the history of Pizarro's conquest of the Incas, I decided it would be worth it to see how the author would change the course of events. A helpful aspect of the book was that each chapter began with a short blurb about what really happened. This helps the reader be aware of where the story deviates into its alternate course.

Most of the time the book was entertaining, not with intense action or drama, but with an unfolding of relationships within the Incan community. Atahualpa, called Exemplary Fortune in the book, is the main character, sent away to a distant part of the kingdom to govern there, since one of his brothers, newly appointed as the emperor, fears being overthrown. This is something that did not really happen.

Much of the story describes how Exemplary Fortune learns to govern his region, and, having taken a captive Spaniard with him, comes to understand the Spanish character, purposes, and fighting style. He uses this to his culture's advantage, teaching his soldiers how to combat Spanish-style, preparing the Incas for possible invasion.

A parallel story involves a young Incan whom the Spaniards called Felipe, and who is taken to Spain by Pizarro, as a companion/servant/trophy. When they return to Peru, Felipe tries his best to find a way to escape and warn his people of the Spanish invasion.

The author does a good job of creating an atmosphere of a foreign culture. The way the Indians speak, their beliefs and interactions are different enough from ours that it creates a feeling of a distant time and place containing a unique people. Yet I was never convinced that it was a true representation of the culture.

In the book, the Spaniards do invade, but the book ends in a limbo state, with neither side winning--as yet. We are left to imagine what happens next. The reader is the one who must create the alternate history at this point, deciding whether the course of prior events in the story could have possibly changed the outcome of the Spanish invasion. It seems like the author neglected to finish what she started, yet I was also relieved to be spared from reading further details of what I know was the awful truth of that invasion.

This is a fascinating and well written alternate history of the conquest of the Inca of Peru by the Spaniards. Allés Blom has attempted something very difficult-writing an empathetic narrative novel about an historically and geographically remote people with an alien mindset-and brought it off.

Part of what makes stories like this enjoyable is the exotic sets of customs we learn, and Blom does a very good job of unfolding them for us. By having two native protagonists-one an Inca prince, the other a nobody taken by the Spanish-we get to see the story from opposite viewpoints. Actually, there's a third view as well, for each chapter begins with a few words on the "true" history of the conquest (1527-1532). Blom skillfully inverts our expectations, perhaps, that the Spanish were civilized and the Inca barbarians or savages. The Inca prince is depicted as highly rational, shrewd, cautious, and engagingly amiable, not easily awed by a bunch of wild and dirty pale invaders. Blom seems to have adopted the French view that the Inca Empire was a socialist utopia, polite and gentle, clean and organized, with food and sex for everyone. (Never mind that you can detect in the background that they indeed have armies, expropriation and kidnapping of entire populations, killing rivals and prisoners, sacrifices, fixed status, and absolute gender discrimination, in what was, after all, a monarchical empire by conquest.) In contrast, the Spaniards are constructed as lacking any socially redeeming qualities: gold-sickened, rowdy, mean, sexist, disloyal, smelly, thieving, fighting, and destructive (all probably true of the Conquistadores, too). No mention is made of the religious fervor of the Spaniards, their skills honed to fever pitch from ridding Spain of the Moors.

None of the perhaps familiar Inca names-Cuzco, Atahualpa, Huascar-are here straight, but only in strange English translation of the long flowery names that takes a while to get used to. The map is helpful but too small, and the scale is now incorrect in the shrunken pb edition. Signs this is a first novel include purely good or evil characters, formally stilted speech, and linear parallel plot structure. Be warned, the story simply stops at a critical point. I hope there's a sequel developing the "alternative" Inca response during1532-1534.

In my efforts to fill the hole in my life that exists between fininishing Eric Flint's "1633" and the arrival of its sequel, I fortuitoulsy happened on "Inca." It was not in the SF and Fantasy section, so I originally took it for a Clive Cussler clone. Thank goodness I picked it up and read the back side. This is right up there with Flint, although closer as a sub-genre to Jake Page's "Apacheria," which is to say we are not dealing with folks from the present going to the past. The hypothesis here is "if things had started just a little differently . . " It proceeds from there very logically and very enjoyably. It is well-researched and well-plotted. The only down-side is it has left me with a hole in my life to fill until its sequel comes out. Ms Blom, you owe us now. You have a contract with your readers. Write faster!

I bought this book because of the maps and the information it gave as to how to be a good independent backpacker. If it were not for the hidden pages at the end of the book, I would give this book 10 stars. Hidden at the back of the book, you have an update section. This section mentions that independent backpacking is no longer allowed. The only thing usefull about the book now is its sections about lima and cuzco but if I wanted a normal guide book, I woul buy the Lonely Planet, not this one

This book was good as a general introduction to the trail and to get an idea of what to expect. However, while actually in Machu Picchu, nothing can beat a tour guide. More than half the book is dedicated to the trail and preparing for the hike, so if you have done this already or you are going with a group, this entire section will not be very helpful. The remainder of the book gives an average description of the site while leaving some serious gaps. Tour guides are great in this respect. The maps of the trail itself were a bit confusing and lacked detail. I would have preferred to buy another book on the subject. However, after looking at the books both in the states and while I was in Peru, I discovered that this is the best book out there - unfortunately. So if you want advance information on the trail and the ruins before you get there (and can get yourself a tour guide), buy this book. Just don't expect much.

I got this book as a gift just as I was to embark on a most magical 10 day trip to Lima/Cuzco and to hike the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu from Km-82. It is a treasure. I carried it along everywhere that I went. The Lima section needs some updates (Archaeological Museum is CLOSED on Mondays!) and I wish there were more spanish to english phrases but these are nits, the history and the trail description are fantastic and that is the main intent of the book. You do not need any other book! Good show.