Includes bibliographical references and index.

Pre-Hispanic, conquest, and early Colonial Lima -- Pre-Hispanic Lima / César Pacheco Vélez -- The foundation of Lima / Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca -- The form and greatness of Lima / Bernabé Cobo -- Lima's convents / José de la Riva-Aguero -- The spiritual diary of an Afro-Peruvian mystic / Ursula de Jesús -- Auto-da-fé and processión / Josephe and Francisco Mugaburu -- Margarita's wedding dress / Ricardo Palma -- Bourbon Lima -- Of the inhabitants of Lima / Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa -- The 1746 earthquake / Anonymous -- A failed Indian uprising / Anonymous -- Lima and Cuzco / Concolorcorvo -- Slave religion and culture / Hesperióphylo -- Faces of all colors / Hipólito Ruiz -- Impressions of Lima / Alexander von Humboldt -- From independence to the War of the Pacific (1821-1884) -- Lima in 1821 / Basil Hall -- The passion for bullfighting / William S. W. Ruschenberger -- Pancho Fierro / Natalia Majluf -- A slave plantation / Flora Tristán -- The saddest city / Herman Melville -- Lima's carnival and its glories / Manuel Atanasio Fuentes -- The Amancaes parade / Ismael Portal -- Chinese are not welcome / Mariano Castro Zaldívar -- The national library and the Chilean occupation / E. W. Middendorf -- Modernizing Lima (1895-1940) -- The transformation of Lima after 1895 / José Gálvez -- A middle-class house in 1900 / Luis Alberto Sánchez -- The growing popular taste for soccer / El Comercio -- The Lord of the Miracles procession / José Carlos Mariátegui -- Dance in the cemetery / El Tiempo -- On the streetcar / Martín Adán -- Leguía's Lima / Guillermo Rodríguez Mariátegui -- The paperboy / Felipe Pinglo Alva -- Daily life of a domestic servant / Laura Miller -- Interlude: nostalgia and its discontents -- The true Lima / Chabuca Granda -- The mislaid nostalgia / Sebastián Salazar Bondy -- Of the ugliest cities in the world? / Alberto Flores Galindo -- Understanding Huachafería / Mario Vargas Llosa -- The many Limas (1940') -- Malambo, a black neighborhood / Hugo Marquina Rí́os -- The original mansion / Alfredo Bryce Echenique -- Diego Ferre and Miraflores / Mario Vargas Llosa -- The banquet / Julio Ramón Ribeyro -- A Serrano family in Lima / Richard W. Patch -- The great march of Villa el Salvador / José María Salcedo -- Being young and radical (late 1960s and 1970s) / Maruja Martínez -- The day Lima erupted / Enrique Zileri Gibson -- A city of outsiders / José Matos Mar -- The Israelites of the new universal covenant / Peter Masson -- María Elena Moyano / Robin Kirk -- The Tarata Street bombing: July 16, 1992 / Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- Shining path: a prisoner's testimony / Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- Twenty-first-century feudalism / Wilfredo Ardito Vega -- Chicha and Huayno: Andean music and culture in Lima / Gisela Cánepa -- That sickly applause / 'El cholo Juan' -- Life among the pirates / Daniel Alarcón -- How food became religion in Peru's capital city / Marco Avilés -- Green vultures / Charles F. Walker.