More Terrible Than Death - Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia

More Terrible Than Death is a gripping work that maps the dramatic new relationship between the United States and Colombia in human terms, using portraits of the Colombians and Americans involved, the author's experiences in Colombia as a writer and human rights investigator and an insider's analysis of the political realities that shape the expanding war on drugs and the growing U.S. military presence there. [more...]

   A Note from the Author

   Human Rights in Colombia

• "A vividly written and often mesmerizing first-hand account of the violence [more...]"
  - The Wall Street Journal
   
• “Heartbreaking... puts human faces on the quagmire and makes a plea to raise awareness of the worsening tragedy. [more...]”
  - Seattle Times
   
• "An exasperatingly appropriate guide...With an uncanny reservoir of guts and fortitude, [Kirk] has put herself at considerable risk in gathering the evidence she needed...Her stories of tempting the assassins are disturbing and engrossing, and she provides as complete an explanation of the country's predicament as readers will find in English. [more...]"
  - The San Francisco Chronicle
   

A Spanish edition is forthcoming from Paidos

The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics - by Orin Starn, Robin Kirk and Carlos Iván Degregori - Second Edition

Sixteenth-century Spanish soldiers described it as a land filled with gold and silver, a land of untold wealth. Nineteenth-century travelers wrote of soaring Andean peaks plunging into luxuriant Amazonian canyons of orchids, pythons, and jaguars. The early-twentieth-century American adventurer Hiram Bingham told of the raging rivers and the wild jungles he traversed on his way to “discover” the “Lost City of the Incas,” Machu Picchu. Seventy years later, news crews from ABC and CBS traveled to Peru to report on merciless terrorists, starving peasants, and Colombian drug runners in the “white gold” rush of the coca trade. For better or worse, Peru has often been described in broad superlatives: as the land of the richest treasures, the bloodiest conquest, the most poignant ballads, and the most violent revolutionaries. This revised and updated second edition of the bestselling Peru Reader offers a deeper understanding of the complex country that lies behind these claims. [more...]

  A taste of The Peru Reader:
        “The Pongo’s Dream,” by José María Arguedas

The Peru Reader is coedited by Orin Starn, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University; and Carlos Ivan Degregori, Director of the Institute of Peruvian Studies, Professor at the National University of San Marcos, Lima, and a former member of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

• "This is an extremely deep, broad and insightful collection on Peru." -- Jorge Castaneda, Newsweek columnist and author of Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War and former Foreign Minister of Mexico
   
• "A livelier, more literate introduction to a foreign world could not be hoped for. A Peruvian trove, indeed; so much that one hardly knows where to begin dipping into its treasures." -- Alma Guillermoprieto, author of The Heart that Bleeds: Latin America Now
   

AVAILABLE NOW

The Monkey's Paw -
New Chronicles from Peru

Nowhere in South America have the twin crises of political rebellion and economic collapse taken so high a toll as in Peru. Since 1980, thirty thousand people have died in the war between the Shining Path and government forces. At the same time, a disastrous economic decline has boosted to more than twelve million the number of Peruvians living in extreme poverty. Drawing on Peru's rich history, journalist Robin Kirk combines interviews and personal narrative to present a vivid portrait of this turbulent country. [more...]

   Human Rights in Peru

    The Shining Path on Robin Kirk

• "This is a compelling memoir of Peru and a rich and persuasive analysis of the Shining Path movement. Kirk's deeply sympathetic and unsentimental approach to individuals in moments of distress, defeat, confrontation, and discovery give this book broad appeal. A first-rate book." -- Philip Bennett, Foreign Editor, Boston Globe
   
• "The Monkey's Paw is outstanding. Kirk is a magnificent writer and is very knowledgeable about Peruvian politics and society. Once I had started, I found the book very hard to put down." -- Cynthia McClintock, George Washington University
   
• "[The Monkey's Paw] is one of the best books written on Latin America in the 1990s." - Toronto Globe and Mail
   

All material is for Website only and may not be cited without permission of the author.
Sólo para leer en la Web, no citar sin permiso del autor.

Email Robin Kirk