One hundred years ago this month, a young lecturer in history at Yale University named Hiram Bingham made what at the time was celebrated as an historic, indeed heroic, climb through the Peruvian Andes at the climax of which, as Mark Adams puts it in this entirely delightful book, “he stumbled across the geometric splendor of Machu Picchu.” Honored at the time as one of the greatest explorers of the day - it was the day, mind you, of Peary and Scott and Amundsen - he has since lost a good deal of his luster, in part because Machu Picchu had been known for years to many Peruvians before his “discovery” and in part because of Yale’s adamant refusal until late last year to return to Peru the hundreds of antiquities he carried away.
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