One way to go about this is to look at reviews. H-net, the social sciences and humanities network, as one example, has its own section on book reviews where scholars of the field review and discuss books, including pop and academic history. Similarly, for larger publications more oriented towards a general public publications such as the London and New York review of books as well as newspapers such as the Guardian often cover history publications.

But mostly it is sites like H-net and similar things (sometimes, they unfortunately are also pay journals such as Holocaust and Genocide Studies) and their reviews, which will tell you if a book is good, up to the standards of current consensus and worth reading as well as enable you to discover new stuff in the area you are interested in.

Most of the professors I met will also read these reviews before they decided whether to read a book or not.

And finally, you can always try to ask here, either about a certain author/book or ask for book recommendations.

here is a short guide, in no particular order (well the order is, "oh, here is a book in a charity shop should I get it?")

• 1. Acknowledgements

first thing you do is speed read the acknowledgements, if its just mum and dad leave the book on the shelf. If its a list of other scholars, and people you recognise the names of it is usually a good sign. If the work says "I would like to thank my old PhD supervisor Prof. Top Historian in this Field" it is a very good sign.

• 2. Referencing

Also check the references, the footnotes/endnotes and the bibliography. If it isn't referenced properly don't touch it. If they reference primary sources without the proper title and archive code (this is specifically for works post-1950, I'll explain why at the end) its probably bad. Its the same with secondary sources, no page/chapter number, no hope. Good works of history will allow the reader to go back to the archive or library take out the book/manuscript and read what they wrote about, so you know they aren't just making stuff up.

• 3. Famous Names

If you already know a bit about the topic you'll have identified some important historians within it, and you would have notice they get referenced a lot. If the work doesn't engage with these people at all it probably isn't well researched. In many cases even if a historian does not agree with another historian/school they will still include it in their work so that they can discount it.

• 4. Reviews

If you aren't just wondering around a bookshop or library you can read reviews, these can be found in historical journals. Lots of these are subscription based so if you are not currently studying/working at a university it can be difficult. I would recommend the [Institute of Historical Research] (http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/) (UK based) as a good starting point. They have lots of free to view reviews on their website.

• that bit I said about 1950, even though it is actually a completely arbitrary date which I probably shouldn't use

Ok I said i you see stuff from before 1950 which isn't referenced properly it might still be ok. Why is this, well 1950 is a sort of arbitrary date from personal experience (I sort of guessed by this point any of the 'Victorian' historians would have died off) but back in the day there were a lot of archives which were less organised and historical standards were a little different. Like in older historiography referencing is often attrocious by modern standards, but they could still be good quality works. There are lots of still quite good 19th century works which use very odd referencing styles, so you should be careful when you discount stuff based on how its referenced.

Just a quick heads up on the Inca specifically, it's worth putting on your radar that all of the primary documents the secondary sources are going to reference were written many years after the conquest based on interviews with old men who were relatively junior participants with incomplete world views who participated on opposite sides of several civil wars in the run up and aftermath of the conquistadors' arrival. None of Pizarro's men who were literate survived to write memoirs, and most of the high-ranking Inca fled into the Amazon and established a rump state in exile there that lasted three generations.

That's not to say there isn't a lot of good in the primary documents, but no two agree on all points. As just one example, Atauhuallpa has two different mothers depending whether the primary source conducted his interviews in the north or the south. I suspect after his father Huayna Capac reconquered the rebellious Kingdom of Quitu (roughly modern Ecuador), Atauhuallpa rebranded himself as having an Ecuadorian mother so the north would back him when he marched south to war with his half-brother Huascar after smallpox killed both Huayna Capac and his heir, Ninan Cuyuchi. Interviews conducted in Cuzco say Atauhuallpa's mother was just a concubine from the extended royal family, which would make Atauhuallpa a bastard (not that that had as much stigma to the Inca as it would in medieval Europe, but it's still painting him unfavourably in a succession struggle).

I would summarize by saying whatever you do, don't read one primary document and call it a day. If you're looking for just one book, pick a secondary source that weighs the merits of all of the primary documents fairly and cites broadly from across all of them. I don't think there is one definitive close reading of the Inca's history, but there are several good ' broad strokes' books out there.

Follow-up question: If you have already found some publishing companies which typically do outstanding jobs and receive works only under strict guidelines, can you safely purchase something from them with certainty? Publishers like Yale UP or Harvard UP are to be trusted in picking only well-researched books or do they also lax their guidelines to allow certain authors a pass?