Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) Book

Archaeology was still a young discipline in the early 1900s and most of the public interest it generated centered on finds in the Middle East. No one had ever found the Inca strongholds said to lie in the mountains of Peru. In 1911 Hiram Bingham, a Yale University scholar, set off for Peru and found Machu Picchu not long after his arrival. At first, the discovery of a lost city high in the mountains was not as important to him as scaling Mount Coropua, Peru's highest peak, the tale of which is included in this book. It would take several years and a grant from the National Geographic Society to finance his expedition and realize the true significance of Machu Picchu, one of the world's most astonishing archaeological sites.

Written in 1022, Inca Land wonderfully evokes a lost world, not only the world of the Inca but also a world of freewheeling exploration, where and entrepreneurial spirit like Bingham's could take a young man on marvelous adventures. This book tells the many tales of Bingham's adventures, one of which just happened to be discovering a lost city.