Stone Offerings: Machu Picchu's Terraces of Enlightenment

Steps carved from huge rocks, boulders used for the sides of buildings, windows precisely aligned to capture the first rays of the solstice sun, and other amazing features of Peru's Machu Picchu are captured in this collection of Torrey's detailed photographs. An architectural photographer, Torrey finds that the ancient Incan city ""framed the implicit harmony between nature and humans...forming an underlying skeleton that signifies our interconnectedness. "" Approximately 120 pages of photographs from the ""Ancient Peak,"" sometimes called the Lost City of the Incas, will captivate armchair adventurers and spur travelers' imagination. What is known of the city's history is related in the introduction: built in the 15th century, abandoned not long after, ""lost"" for several centuries, and then rediscovered (and plundered) in the 19th century. To capture the city drenched in sunlight and etched in fog, Torrey visited Machu Picchu at the summer and winter solstices. Dazzling views of stone terraces against the green mountainsides reveal the intricate, mortarless construction of each, built from thousands of stones carried and set by hand. Photo captions are spare and far between, but Torrey concludes with a useful long shot labeling the site's points of interest.