I just finished reviewing my first e-book, and I must say that I'm not absolutely convinced about the format. The book is Gordon McEwan's The Incas: New Perspectives, and it's part of a series at ABC-Clio, called Understanding Ancient Civilizations.

The Incas: New Perspectives
Photo Credit: ABC-Clio (c) 2008

The text of the book is fabulous--an indepth (and up-to-date) look at the Inca empire from history and archaeology sources, and it's written in a clear manner by one of the experts in the field. There are some good aspects of the e-book format--a built in dictionary and thesaurus, a search engine, and a clickable table of contents. And of course, no trees were killed in the making and it won't take up room on the bookshelf. But there are also some not-so-good ones. The text has great photos--but they're in black and white and you can't enlarge them. There are extensive glossary entries, a timeline, and a bibliography, but they're not hot-linked from the text and a bit awkward to access.

Despite these fairly minor quibbles, I highly recommend The Incas as a good generalist introduction on the Inca Empire, certainly suitable for high school reference or as an introductory undergraduate text. In particular, I also think the Understanding Ancient Civilizations series bears looking at, if you're a librarian at a high school, a generalist seeking background info, or a college prof looking for good introductory course texts.

• The Incas: New Perspectives, the full review
• Buy the traditional print book on Pricegrabber
• Buy either format (traditional or e-book) on the publisher's website
• Understanding Ancient Civilizations, take a look at the series
• See more books on the Inca Empire