A SACRED LANDSCAPE; The Search for Ancient Peru

Woodstock and New York: The Overlook Press, 2007. First Edition. Cloth and boards. Very Fine/Very Fine. 8vo, black cloth with red spine lettering over charcoal boards with blind-stamped elephant logo, Mylar-protected dust jacket (unclipped) with photograph of mountain mists and Nazca condor, profusely illustrated with B&W photographs on glossy stock by the author plus 3 maps & chronological chart, [xxii] + 330 pages. Hugh Thomson is a writer, explorer, and author of The White Rock. "Hugh Thompson has made a career exploring the mysterious pre-Columbian cultures of ancient Peru, providing unforgettable accounts of South America"s most strange--but enduring--culture. In A Sacred Landscape, he takes us from the great Moche pyramids to remote sites in the Central highlands that date back to the first millennium BCE--ancient Incan sites of the Andes that remain cloaked in mystery. He elegantly interweaves his account of the rise, decline, and fall of pre-Inca civilization with the story of his family"s relocation to a farm in the Yucay valley, the one-time heartland of ancient Peru. Thompson draws on the year that he spent alongside contemporary Peruvians to explore how things have changed--or failed change--in the five centuries or more that separate contemporary Peru from the civilization that is one of the world"s oldest and most captivating enigmas."  .