On May 17, 1980, the eve of the presidential elections in Peru, five hooded individuals stormed into a small town in the heart of the Andes. They set fire to ballot boxes and vanished into the night, before planting a red flag with the hammer and sickle in the central square. The only man arrested the following morning swore allegiance to a group called "Shining Path." This story describes how this fierce group of insurgents undertook a decade-long terrorist campaign, and how brave police officers and journalists managed to bring them to justice. Described by a U.S. State Department document as "cold and ruthless," the "Shining Path" organized bombings, assassinations, and massacres in cities, rural areas, and jungles of Peru, with the aim to seize power and impose a communist government regime. Leading it was the professor-turned-revolutionary, Abimael Guzmán, who launched the insurgent conflict alongside two women: his charismatic young wife, Augusta La Torre, and the formidable Elena Iparraguirre, who married Guzmán shortly after Augusta's mysterious death. Their fanatical devotion to an outdated and dogmatic ideology, coupled with the military's bloody response, led to the deaths of nearly 70,000 Peruvians. The narrative work by Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna on the Shining Path is both panoramic and intimate, set within the socio-economic upheavals of Peru's difficult transition from military dictatorship to democracy. Readers are drawn into the heart of the revolution and into the lives and the country that was nearly destroyed. We hear the voices of mountain villagers who organized fierce rural resistance and meet the indomitable black activist María Elena Moyano and the Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, each of whom fought to end the bloodshed. With skillful writing, "Shining Path" offers an exceptionally detailed narration of a lesser-known war that must never be forgotten.