Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries by Kim MacQuarrieMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An interesting book, that is part travel memoir and part history. The author, MacQuarrie, travels the Andes mountain range, from the north in Colombia to the very southern tip of Tierra del Fuego. In doing so, he does a really good job of going back and forth between a particularly history that relates to the location, and his current travel experience. His ability to do these transitions seamlessly adds to the quality of the book.
The history/stories he shares are also fascinating - from learning tidbits about the criminal drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia and Darwin's adventures in the Galapagos Islands, to various ancient traditions of the Inca to little known tribes in Pantagonia and Tierra del Fuego. We learn some about Che Guevara's last days, and a guerilla revolution in Peru led by the Shining Path movement that lasted years. Even the tidbits about the Inca, who I had read a little on before this book, was new and informative. In short, there was no chapter in this book, no history that MacQuarrie relayed, that I didn't learn something. In addition to being informative, the author, when writing in the present, does his job as a travel writer well. His descriptions of the physical landscape and the individuals he converses with are detailed without being burdensome, and paint a clear image in a reader's head.
The structure of the book almost made it read as a non-fiction short story collection. The chapters/histories are connected solely by the Andes mountain range, and each chapter tells its own story of history and culture. Ultimately, an informative and interesting read.
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