Life in the Aztec World

Handbook to Life in the Aztec World 
by Manuel Aguilar-Moreno

Since its violent dissolution in 1521, the Aztec Empire of Mexico has continually intrigued us. Recent discoveries resulting from the excavation of the Templo Mayor in the heart of Mexico City have taught us even more about this fascinating culture. The increasing recognition that the achievements of Mesoamerican civilizations were among the most sophisticated of the ancient world has led to a demand for introductions to the basic methods and theories of scholars working throughout the region.

Handbook to Life in the Aztec World gathers the results from recent archaeological discoveries and scholarly research into a single accessible volume. Organized thematically, the handbook covers all aspects of life in the Aztec world: Mesoamerican civilizations and Aztec archeology; evolution of Aztec civilization; geography of the Aztec world; society and government; religion, cosmology, and mythology; funerary beliefs and customs; Aztec art; Aztec architecture; Nahuatl literature; the calendar, astronomy, and mathematics; economy, industry, and trade; daily life; the Aztec after conquest and today. Each chapter includes an extensive bibliography, and more than 165 original line drawings, photographs, and maps complement the text. Handbook to Life in the Aztec World provides all the essential information required by anyone interested in Aztec history or culture.

Letters of Hernan Cortes to Emperor Charles V (#1)

Letters of Hernan Cortes to Emperor Charles V (Volume 1)
Edited by John Greenway

These five letters by the Spanish Conqueror Hernando Cortes were written to the Emperor Charles V of Spain between the years 1519 and 1526. They describe the earliest discoveries of the mainland, the perilous trek into hostile country, the capture of the Aztec capital, the extension of Cortes power throughout Mexico, the expedition to Honduras, and the organization and ordering of the Spanish empire in the new world.

The Conquest of New Spain

The Conquest of New Spain 
by Bernal Diaz del Castillo

 "The History of the Conquest of New Spain is a subject in which great interest is felt at the present day, and the English public will hail these memoirs, which contain the only true and complete account of that important transaction. The author of this original and charming production, to which he justly gives the title of 'The True History of the Conquest of New Spain,' was himself one of the Conquistadores; one who not only witnessed the transactions which he relates, but who also performed a glorious part in them; a soldier who, for impartiality and veracity, perhaps never had his equal. His account is acknowledged to be the only one on which we can place reliance, and it has been the magazine from which the most eloquent of the Spanish writers on the same subject, as well as those of other countries, have borrowed their best materials. Some historians have even transcribed whole pages, but have not had sufficient honesty to acknowledge it. The author, while living, was never rewarded for the great services he had rendered his country, and it is remarkable that, after his death, his very memoirs were pillaged by court historians, to raise a literary monument to themselves."

The Broken Spears

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla

For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors. León-Portilla's new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance of these unexpected historical accounts.

The Aztecs

The Aztecs: A History
by Nigel Davies

"THE AZTECS is quite simply the best general political history of that nation now available in english...Purchase of this book is a real must for persons with a serious interest in the aboriginal peoples on Mesoamerica, Mexican history, or the comparative study of early civilizations."--LATIN AMERICA IN BOOKS.

Daily Life of the Aztecs

Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest 
by Jacques Soustelle

Soustelle's great book about the Aztecs . . . takes us deep into the life of this great society. . . . Soustelle has the rare quality of entering into the minds of those he is studying and seeing things from their point of view. . . . [His] book is one of the best ever written about the Aztecs, his portrait of their society is a triumph of scholarship, understanding, and literary skill.

The Captive

The Captive
by Scott O'Dell


As part of a Spanish expedition to the New World, a Jesuit seminarian witnesses the enslavement and exploitation of the Mayas and is seduced by greed and ambition.

The Feathered Serpent

The Feathered Serpent 
by Colin Falconer

 The triumphant, controversial life of the Aztec woman Malinali is one of the great and enduring legends of Mexico. A high-born Mexica heiress, she was sold into slavery as a child, and it was as a slave of the Maya that she met the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. To her, and many of the Mexica, Cortés, with his ?owing beard and pale skin, was Feathered Serpent, the god whose return to earth foretold the end of Montezuma’s fabled empire. The daughter of a prophet, Malinali knew her fate lay with Feathered Serpent and his invaders. To this day she is reviled as a traitor by Mexico’s native people, but is also honored as a heroine and symbolic mother of a mixed-race nation. This is her story—and the story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which for better or worse changed the Americas forever. In Feathered Serpent, Colin Falconer brings the Aztec empire to life in blazing color and gives voice to the incomparable Malinali, who transcended her role as Cortés’s translator and consort to become a fiery agent of history against all odds.

Daily Life of the Aztecs

Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

The Aztecs were fierce, honorable, death-obsessed, and profoundly religious. A famed scholar evokes the life of this complex culture on the eve of its extinction, when the Spanish arrived and conquered them--imprisoning Montezuma and strangling Atahualpa. Vivid account of a profoundly religious warrior society — from its most primitive days to the eve of the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. Detailed accounts of life in a city-state, religious beliefs, public buildings and markets, home furnishings, family life, the conduct of war, language, music, much more.