This generously illustrated text is easy to read and is an adequate introduction to Andean prehistory for the layman. However, the book is oversimplified to the point of being sometimes misleading and even inaccurate. The title is a misnomer. The author primarily focuses on north coastal culture history and the Inca empire. Since within the last decade there has been an impressive amount of work published on the highlands, it is unfortunate that this book is so coast-centric. The text is largely a descriptive culture history of a limited area that answers “who, when and where” but ignores the “how and why” of cultural dynamics. For example, Inca society is portrayed as stable and smooth-running, although several forces (social mobility, tax exemption, and private property ownership) were in operation at the time of Pizarro’s arrival promising tranformations to come. The dynamics of economic adaptation to a vertically differentiated and horizontally repetitive geography should also have been pursued in more detail. Last, the author never clearly states the intention of the book.