The most recommended books on the Andes mountains

A great insight in my life has been realizing that the Western world has tricked us into believing there is only one way to know and understand the world.

What do stories of ancient cultures from across the world have to do with creativity and healing? Wade Davis has spent his life living intimately with other cultures and plants; the lessons captured in this book require us to take pause and realize everything we have taken for granted about what we know and how we know it.

As Davis says, "rediscovering the diversity of the human spirit" requires us to unshackle ourselves from our biases and recognize that some things can’t be explained or understood through the narrow lens of the Western world.

Creativity and the imagination are fundamental to being human; this book caused me to question what I was missing by not fully recognizing them as a way… show more.

I love how this book captures the spirit and obsession of climbing in Patagonia; the characters, the landscape, the majesty of the peaks, and our struggles to climb them. Crouch took me there years before I ever went. His devotion to climbing and his depth of experiences, from the harrowing to the mundane (in the endless boredom of waiting for good weather he declares himself “the Muhammad Ali of killing time”) shine in his writing. The book speaks to the obsessed, by the obsessed. It’s a cult classic among Patagonia alpine climbers for good reason.

In this methodologically creative approach, Rossana Barragán narrates the history of colonial Andean silver through images. The slim, 90-page book is organized around 12 images and their global movements. Barragán expertly analyzes scenes of underground mining that other European empires used to justify their own violence, depictions of the Cerro Rico that appealed to Ottoman sensibilities, and the architecture of the mint of Antwerp, the city responsible for coining much of Potosí’s silver and printing many of the books and images that shaped early modern understandings of the Andes. Readers looking for an accessible history of the global consequences of Potosí will be well-served by Barragán’s work.

Few scholars possess the ability to take complex historical situations and present them in a manner that is equal parts educational, palatable, and engaging. Brooke Larson is one of those rare talents. When I was in graduate school, I devoured Larson’s Cochabamba, and soon found myself looking to get my hands on anything authored by her. Needless to say, I was eager to read Trials of Nation Making when it was released. I was not disappointed. This wonderfully engaging history examines the role that race and ethnicity played in the framing, founding, and forming of Andean republics, where Creole elites sought to solve the so-called “Indian Problem.” But this is no top-down history. As Larson masterfully illustrates, Indigenous historical actors employed a range of strategies—from legal action to open rebellion—to demand participation in nation-making processes.  

Like the Stevenson book, this is also about travelling with a donkey, but what makes this narrative special is the author’s hatred of his pack animal. This will sound instantly off-putting but John’s descriptions of Dapple’s transgressions are very, very funny and his fury is never translated into violence towards the animal. There are lyrical descriptions of the landscape in northern Peru, but it is for the humour that I return to this book from time to time. I’m a sucker for any book about Peru, the subject of my early adventures and very first guidebook, and this is one of the most enjoyable. 

This is a fun, evocative account of the author retracing the steps of Hiram Bingham, the “discoverer” of the Inca citadel, Machu Picchu, published 100 years after its discovery. It’s also about the cast of characters that the author meets along the way. If you’ve ever wanted to take a long trek in the Andes in extremely rugged terrain, stumbling across Inca ruins all along the way--then this is the book for you.

Leaping the false fences between ethnography, archaeology, and art history, Weismantel demonstrates that one of the best ways to get in touch with people living in the deep past is to pick up the objects they made and play with them. Funny, creative, sexy, and cool, this is the best book built around artifacts that I have ever read and it has made me realize just how animate objects really are. You will learn about sex, about ancient cultures of the Andes, and about how someone living 1500 years ago might still be pulling your leg.

My personal background and fieldwork have been in North America, Africa, and Europe. Sullivan's book opened the world of ancient South America for me. The Incas lived in a Sacred Kingship, an institution in which Church and State were one, invented in ancient Mesopotamia and diffused as far as the Andes, carrying with it a promise of eternity. In Sacred Kingships, the King was to funnel the essence of the undying Heavens into the ways of Earthbound mortals. Sullivan shows how this all went dreadfully wrong for the Incas when they began to treat mythological notions as literally true, applying the technical language of myth to the real world.

Mangan’s work completely changed the way that I thought about the colonial mining industry and the complexities of Andean gender systems. Through careful case studies and historical scholarship, Mangan gives voice and texture to the lives of Andean market women, artisans, and ordinary miners who filled the streets of Potosí and its surrounding communities. Trading Roles translates global histories of credit, market capitalization, and urbanization into intimate details of family and community life, and in so doing makes it clear that gender was – and is – a central part of Andean mining history. Readers interested in the interactions of gender, commerce, and Indigenous politics in urban spaces will be well-served by Mangan’s work.

This was a foundational book for me as I completed my first fieldwork and wrote my dissertation. Isbell draws the reader into life in a highland village in the Ayacucho region of Peru shortly before it was upended by guerilla warfare, describing strategies villagers used to relate to, and maintain independence from, outside social forces. With vivid examples she provides in-depth analyses of social organization and ritual life, as well as a chapter on urban migration and a postscript about impending violence. 

A vivid, amusing account of the author and her friend cycling and sleeping in the wild from Bolivia to Argentina. It is a story of determination and endurance as they push themselves to the extreme, always taking the hardest, highest route. Exhaustion, frustration, and sickness put their friendship to the test. 

As somebody who is the polar opposite, always seeking the easiest way, I was fascinated by this couple’s approach to adventure, and awed by their achievements.  

Potatoes began as a main food staple in the Andes then spread to the rest of the world and especially Ireland where the dependence of the people on it created havoc that lasted generations, and served humanity as an example never to be forgotten. 

This book explains how the potato brought about changes good and bad until today it is difficult to imagine life without it. A Big Mac with no fries is like a latte with no milk. It was introduced into China in the 1600s and by 2006 China’s potato production at 74 million tons is the largest in the world. The Chinese now consume 88 lb (40 kg) per person annually. 

As to its eatability, what more proof do we need than the movie, Martian in which Matt Damon shows us how he happily survived months on it in space. And he did all that without leaving… show more.

What would you do if your plane crashed in the mountains and you were forced to eat your friends and family to survive. This is an inspiring story of survival and positive mindset. The story, made famous by the film Alive, is told by the man who survived 72 days in the Mountains and managed to rescue his friends. But above all, it is a story of the power of a positive and forgiving mindset. It is a book I will never forget and that has made a lasting impact on me.

Lulu’s dad is a photojournalist who travels the world and brings her back treasures. Anyone who has a traveling parent will connect with this story. It’s a beautifully written and gorgeously illustrated book about a multi-racial family. It’s filled with heart and the love between a dad and daughter with the opportunity to learn some cool facts from the global cultures he brings back to her with his stories and trinkets. So lovely!

As a person from the Andes—and moreover from Bolivia, from a small town in an Andean valley—I also lived and grew up in the US, and I always had to explain where I was from, because so little was known of Bolivia’s geographical location, not to mention its indigenous cultures. The Huarochiri manuscript, in its English translation, is one of the earliest oral testaments of the experience of indigenous peoples under Spanish rule: it’s a testament to their oral tradition and beliefs, it’s a testament of cultural survival, coded in their myths, such as that of the Fox’s Tail, explained as cosmological knowledge in our Anthology. I love this book because it brought me back to understanding my own roots and traditions, it was a source of pride, and it undermined all the negative school teachings about Andean indigenous cultures. Originally written in Quechua, it underwent a translation into… show more.

This was a groundbreaking book when it came out in Peru in the 1970s. It’s the life stories of a street porter in the city of Cuzco and his wife, a market vendor, as they were told to a pair of Peruvian anthropologists. Monolingual in Quechua and living on the street, Gregorio and Asunta were at the very bottom of the social ladder, yet they recount their hard lives with such eloquence, humor, and grace that their words leap from the page. This is essential reading for anyone interested in Andean people, and a book you’ll never forget.