I highly recommend this book for scholars and curious men and women alike

Not only experience the wonderful food of the Maya but also live the adventure of collecting the recipes gathered in the lowland bush of the Yucatan by the author/anthropologist, Cherry Hamman. Share her unique writing style as she seeks (and finds) the data to support her hypothesis for her graduate degree in Anthropology.
You will have a problem though..."where to store the book". Should you keep it in kitchen next to her feature story in Bon Appetite" where they will be ready for your next culinary adventure or should you keep it in the library in the anthropology section? Answer: Buy two!!

This is an extraordinary book! One of the Oxford University Press' 'Library of Latin America' series, exquisitely translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane, this is a book worthy of the highest praise. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier y Noriega (Mexico, 1763-1827), persecuted by the Inquisition for thirty years for his challenge to the colonial mentality and his willingness "to play an active role in movements of emancipation," These memoirs were written in the Inquisitor's prisons. It is truly a most extraordinary book, a topsy-turvy book -where Europeans are the "barbarians"! An exalting experience! De Mier was famed in his own time as a scholar and a thinker and indeed, the 240 pages of this most uncommon of books, this rarity, unsheathe the most remarkable figure of a man, and enlighten us, almost with a novelist's succinct eye, about the true nature of the world and its passing, and our time in it. Impossible to overstate the importance of this publication. Simply first-rate!

Marcus's volume is the most comprehensive book on the market in the field of Mesoamerican epigraphy, the study of ancient writing systems among four high cultures that arose in what was later to become Mexico and Guatemala: the Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Maya. Marcus is recognized as one of the preeminent scholars of these early writing systems, with a pedigree that includes having studied with perhaps the greatest of the Mesoamerican epigraphers, Tatiana Proskouriakoff. Marcus also is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which indicates the esteem with which she is held by her peers. Thus she is more than capable of pushing the field of Mesoamerican epigraphy forward, and the present volume demonstrates adequately that she has done so. Unlike some modern epigraphers, Marcus casts a wary eye on the literal nature of the hieroglyphic notations contained in the various texts, a caution reflected in the subtitle of the book. In short, she views Mesoamerican writing systems as part propaganda, part myth, and part history; thus, as she states, it was both a tool and a by-product of competition for prestige and leadership positions.

The volume includes 12 chapters that integrate various topics such as the nature of Mesoamerican calendars, royal marriages, place names, and ancestors-a much better format than arranging the book strictly by cultural group. The greatest strength of the book lies in clarity of presentation and the inclusion of several hundred line drawings of examples of glyphs. The drawings make it easy to follow Marcus's discussion of things such as the various Mesoamerican calendars in use throughout Mesoamerica.

I recommend the volume to anyone with an interest in calendrics, epigraphy, and/or Mesoamerican archaeology, from the advanced undergraduate to the professional as well as members of the general public. Anyone except experts will have to be willing to work a little bit to fully comprehend Marcus's explanations of the writing systems, but the task is not as daunting as it seems. All in all, a five-star treatise.

While reading Dan McCall's short novel Messenger Bird, I had to keep returning to the book jacket to remind myself that this was a novel, rather than a particularly engaging and sensitive memoir. Told in the first person, McCall's book recounts two years in the life of a young surgeon, Jim, paying off his medical school loans by working at a small hospital in New Mexico on an Apache reservation. The "messenger bird" of the title is Annie Messenger Bird Lester Mendez, a gifted nurse at the hospital who becomes Jim's lover and best insight into the Indian community. Much of this novel is episodic -- medical emergencies confronted by Jim, or his life in the community. Through these vignettes McCall constructs a community, two characters (Jim and Annie) and a larger social structure that resonate with compassion and truth. I read this short book in two sittings, and wished it were half again as long. Highly recommended.

Donald Hodges masterfully lays out the political situation in Mexico in this book, used by numerous colleges and universities. Hodges taught at the Mexico State University for over a decade, and in doing so, grasped the people, the subject, and the overall feel of the climate spelled out in this work. If anyone is interested in Mexican anarcho-communism, this book is a must read. A clearer picture of the topic has yet to be painted, and it is doubtful a clearer picture will ever exist.

Contiene una amplia colección de fotografías que muestran la gran variedad y riqueza arquitectónica de las iglesias de México, algunas de las cuales son poco conocidas, y que en cierta medida deben su esplendor al sincretismo cultural hispano-indígena. Las fotografías fueron tomadas alrededor de 1956, por el excelente fotógrafo, sobre todo de paisajes, Eliot Porter (quién abandonó la fotografía por la medicina).

It contains a large colection of photos that shows the great variety and arquitectonic richness of Mexican churches, some of them are not well know, and their splendor is in certain way product of the cultural hispano-indian sincretism. The photos were taken around 1956 by the excelent photographer, landscape specialist, Eliot Porter (who quit medicine for photography).

When one thinks of the classical Mexican corrido, thoughts of Jungian archetypes and the words of Joseph Campbell usually do not come into mind. But Mrs. Sobek does just that and much more in this fascinating book. Drawing upon four archetypes of women in Mexican society, she proceeds to define them and put them against the archetypes of classical mythology. She also gives an insight into the Mexican female psyche, along with her role in history. Can hold up as its own work, though it goes hand in hand with her other book on corridos dealing with the immigrant experience.

Douglas W. Richmond is well versed in Mexican as well as Latin American history, despite being a gringo, he is a "righteous gringo!" After reading his splendid book, mailed it to a student in Argentina so it can be enjoyed down there too! Unfortunately such books are not common in Central and South America, only in Cuba and formerly in liberated Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega, could you find such well informed literature which exposes U.S. and foreign corporations who suck the life blood out of Latin Americans, as Richmond points out. He shows that on September 11, 1973, the C.I.A. under then U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissigner had democratically elected Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende murdered, maybe September 11, 2001 has a connection? Douglas pointed it out, yet the Bush regime remains silent along with the IMF, CIA, and FBI, why is that? Those pilots were d4edicated Marxists, ever wonder why that was not mentioned in the stories? Maybe like the late Malcom X stated: "The Chickens Come Home to Roost," said after John F. Kennedy "bought the farm," read his book, you cannot go wrong!

This delightful account of two women now in their late 60's describes the whim that became a dream which turned into a flourishing enterprise. In 1972 the author and her new friend Mary broke out of a Junior League life of civic associations by deciding to hold a Mexican crafts sale in the unheated third floor of the author's rambling house. To sell crafts they had to buy them. They loaded a suburban station wagon with canned goods to forestall hunger and drove south with $1,888 stuffed in homemade money belts. The author, who spoke Spanish, translated and worried about customs. Mary, who packed the lunches and watched the account ledgers, provided the right contrasts.

On the road the two women encountered dangers, great generosity, magnificent artistry, and wonderful stories. Anyone today following the routes traced in the book will find few changes. Teotitlan del Valle weavers still ply their art in the heat and dust. The black pottery of Coyotepec is made in the same fashion. Cholula and its pyramid are as fascinating today as in the 1970's. The same can be said for dozens of other places encountered in Young's Mexican odyssey.

With profound, but not syrupy, sensibility, Biloine Young tells us how the odyssey changed her and her friend and how they became part of the country whose crafts they sold. The "tag sale" became a well-known Midwestern boutique but the goods continued to some extent to be articles of enduring integrity, ingenuity, and value.

Young's prose is as well made as a Oaxacan pot. Her lively accounts, told with unpretentious humor and self-revelation, should star the recommendation of this multifaceted book for travelers to Mexico, persons interested in marketing crafts, and those wanting spend a time with appealing women.