Books and articles

Books by Robin Kirk

More Terrible Than Death: America’s War in Colombia (Public Affairs, 2004)

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. Looking at the war from the ground up, interviewing and profiling human rights activists, guerrillas, and paramilitaries to explain how it has changed their lives, Robin Kirk gives depth and meaning to the headlines that leave unexplained the intimate dimension of the U.S./Colombian relationship.

“A vividly written and often mesmerizing first-hand account of the violence” —The Wall Street Journal

“An exasperatingly appropriate guide…With an uncanny reservoir of guts andfortitude, [Kirk] has put herself atconsiderable risk in gathering theevidence 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.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Kirk’s book features dramatic, often funny, and sometimes terrifying tales of her travels as a human rights researcher in Colombia…She does a remarkable job of synthesizing Colombian history for a U.S. audience…Well-written and wide-ranging, [MTTD] offer[s] something to novice readers and Latin American experts alike.”—NACLA Journal

The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997)

Drawing on Peru’s rich history, journalist Robin Kirk combines interviews and personal narrative to present a vivid portrait of this turbulent country. The book opens with her first trip to Peru in 1983, just as the Shining Path guerrillas plunged the nation into sudden, violent change. Amid the horror and loss of war, she finds moving and often marvelous human stories of people from all walks of life. She ends her narrative with the bittersweet return of peasant refugees to their war-ravaged Andean villages.

“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

“In the first few pages of her book, Kirk writes: “It takes stubbornness, perhaps arrogance, and a certain faith in the face of long odds to write about someone else’s country.” The country Kirk has chosen, moreover, is a vastly complex and changing place. Nonetheless, she has succeeded remarkably well in detailing Peru’s many facets, in capturing the grand schemes and the day-to-day struggles, in recounting the varied and fascinating Peruvians who cross her path with all their strengths and all their weaknesses, in avoiding simplistic conclusions, and in making me feel as if I myself lived in “someone else’s country.” The book is a must for anyone interested in the people who live in Peru and its complicated web of social struggle. Her clear, evocative writing recreates Peru on the page for readers who can’t go there themselves, and adds to the experience of those who can. I loved it.”  – an Amazon.com reviewer

The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2005), coedited with Orin Starn and Carlos Ivan Degregori

Sixteenth-century Spanish soldiers described Peru as a land filled with gold and silver, a place 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 rediscovering 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. As often as not, Peru has been portrayed in broad extremes: 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.

Unparalleled in scope, the volume covers Peru’s history from its extraordinary pre-Columbian civilizations to its citizens’ twenty-first-century struggles to achieve dignity and justice in a multicultural nation where Andean, African, Amazonian, Asian, and European traditions meet. The collection presents a vast array of essays, folklore, historical documents, poetry, songs, short stories, autobiographical accounts, and photographs. Works by contemporary Peruvian intellectuals and politicians appear alongside accounts of those whose voices are less often heard—peasants, street vendors, maids, Amazonian Indians, and African-Peruvians. Including some of the most insightful pieces of Western journalism and scholarship about Peru, the selections provide the traveler and specialist alike with a thorough introduction to the country’s astonishing past and challenging present.

“The Peru Reader is a joy both for Peru specialists and those seeking an introduction to the country’s political and social development…It brings together in English a wide variety of texts, to provide a diversity of views of Peruvians (past and present) about their country, as well as foreign observers…The beauty [is] that the texts speak for themselves, reflecting a multiplicity of views.” –John Crabtree, Journal of Latin American Studies

“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 Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

“This is an extremely deep, broad, and insightful collection on Peru.”–Jorge Casteneda, author of Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War and former Foreign Minister of Mexico

“One of the best overviews yet of Peruvian history and politics.”–The Rough Guide to Peru

“This is a great paperback to bring on the airplane or a long train ride, stuffed with an endlessly entertaining and eclectic collection of short stories, anthropological essays, translated chronicles, and a bit of poetry.”–Moon Handbooks Peru

“This anthology is a wonderful addition to any course on Latin America and Peru and is accessible to both graduates and undergraduates. I have used pieces from this book for my undergraduate courses and plan to incorporate at least one of the pieces new to this second edition into my courses in the near future. The book should also be of interest to nonacademics interested in learning more about Peru.”–M. Cristina Alcalde, The Latin Americanist