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Title details for Life and Death in the Andes by Kim MacQuarrie - Available

Life and Death in the Andes

On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries

by Kim MacQuarrie
Jonathan Yen
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The Andes Mountains are the world's longest mountain chain, linking most of the countries in South America. Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and author Kim MacQuarrie takes us on a historical journey through this unique region, bringing fresh insight and contemporary connections to such fabled characters as Charles Darwin, Pablo Escobar, Che Guevara, and many others. He introduces us to a Patagonian woman who is the last living speaker of her language, as he explores the disappearance and sometimes surprising resiliency of indigenous cultures throughout the Andes. He meets a man whose grandfather witnessed Butch Cassidy's last days in Bolivia and tracks down the ballet dancer who once hid the leader of the brutal Shining Path in her home.
Through the stories he shares, MacQuarrie raises such questions as, where did the people of South America come from? Did they create or import their cultures? What makes South America different from other continents—and what makes the cultures of the Andes different from other cultures in South America? Deeply observed and beautifully written, Life and Death in the Andes shows us this land as no one has before.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 1, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781494593858
      • File size: 484828 KB
      • Duration: 16:50:03

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      MacQuarrie's tales of traveling in search of history begin in Colombia and trace the spine of the Andes until it disappears into the sea at Tierra del Fuego. Jonathan Yen is a skilled audiobook performer. Many of the stories involve well-known people--Pablo Escobar, Thor Heyerdahl, Charles Darwin, and Che Guevara. This audiobook is a collection of stories, not a single narrative. Only geography and the narrator hold it together. Yen's upbeat, slightly nasal delivery is always easy to follow. His pacing is excellent, although his Spanish pronunciation is uneven. Even in the second decade of the 21st century, the cultural fabric of South America remains a mystery to most North Americans. MacQuarrie provides an engaging antidote to ignorance. F.C. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 14, 2015
      Filmmaker MacQuarrie (The Last Days of the Incas) assembles an overly ambitious mix of travelogue, history, and anthropological study that tours the Andes mountain range through stories of well-known people who inhabited the region in the past. The hodgepodge of miniature historical accounts, which leap around in time and subject, is strung together primarily by geography. The figures include Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in the late 1980s and ’90s, naturalist Charles Darwin on his trip to the Galápagos Islands, famous bandits Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara during his last days in the Bolivian forest, among others. MacQuarrie interjects himself into the narrative, sometimes as a reporter (as when he interviews the colonel in charge of hunting down Escobar) and other times as a traveler (as when he recounts arguing with an elderly Chinese tourist about creationism while on a boat tour of the Galápagos). The time line of this personal subthread is never apparent and makes for a stringy, convoluted narrative that fails to create a comprehensive whole. Agent: Sarah Lazin, Sarah Lazin Books.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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