“[A] fascinating….clear-eyed…poignant summary of the collision between ancient and modern that has done much to shape the Andean region.”

“Using the wildly diverse 4,300- mile South American mountain chain as a backdrop, filmmaker and writer Kim MacQuarrie revisits the triumphs and depredations of such varied figures in the region as Charles Darwin, Che Guevara, drug cartel chief Pablo Escobar, Machu Picchu “discoverer” Hiram Bingham and the ever-mythic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

But MacQuarrie is no hit-and-run chronicler cherry-picking fables. He immerses himself in the territory he’s been exploring since the late 1980s, when he first journeyed to Peru to interview imprisoned members of the Shining Path guerrilla movement. His account of how Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán was finally run to ground is both a rousing good yarn and a case study in political error.

The author shows that Guevara’s undoing was an instance of revolutionary fervor overriding common sense. He brings fresh details to the narrative by tracking down the teacher who fed and conversed with Guevara in the hours before a Bolivian soldier executed him.

Although famous names provide much of the material in Life and Death in the Andes, they occupy only a part of MacQuarrie’s attention. He also delves into local cultures, explaining, for example, how an American helped found a thriving cooperative that rekindled interest in traditional Peruvian weaving. He retraces Darwin’s steps on the Galápagos Islands and travels to the tip of the continent to meet the last speaker of the once flourishing Yamana Indian language, destroyed by the ravages of colonialism. MacQuarrie is a master storyteller whose cinematic eye always shines through.”

“MacQuarrie engages as well as educates as he travels throughout the mountain range, intertwining past and present and incorporating political and cultural conflict while taking the reader on a journey that goes beyond geography or geology…MacQuarrie spectacularly describes the Andes…This is a well-written, immersive work that history aficionados, particularly those with an affinity for Latin America, will relish.

A filmmaker and writer tells the story of the historical figures and ordinary people who have attempted to “control, adapt to, or explore” the largely wild and untamed Andes cordillera.

MacQuarrie’s (The Last Days of the Incas, 2007, etc.) love affair with South America began during boyhood when he read the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Though the tales themselves concerned an imaginary world at the center of the Earth, the images—of “half-naked tribes and powerful beasts…[and] rich, luxuriant vegetation, beautiful women”—stayed with him and became the unconscious lodestar toward which he gravitated as an adult traveler. In this book, MacQuarrie walks in the footsteps of men and women who followed their dreams into the very lands that he once dreamed about as a child. Many became famous for their exploits: Charles Darwin, for example, discovered fossilized seashells high up in the Patagonian Andes that led to the formulation of his theory of evolution, while Che Guevara attempted to lead a revolution in the Bolivian Andes that he hoped would begin to transform the whole of South America. Some, like Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, found notoriety in the Andes for dark deeds that not only fueled their greed, but also caused social and political chaos. Others, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, used the mountains as a place to hide from their criminal pasts, only to find themselves hounded to death by the law. Still others, like freelance anthropologists Chris and Ed Franquemont, went into the Andes in search of a research project. Instead, they found a community of indigenous people to belong to and helped revitalize the dying art of weaving among them. Part history and part travel narrative, MacQuarrie’s book is as richly detailed as it is deeply felt. As the author describes a magnificent region with a turbulent past, he also pays homage to the “miracles and marvels” that lie buried like gems beneath the unfolding history of the South American continent.

A thoughtfully observed travel memoir and history.