Download or read book The Aztecs written by David Carrasco and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. Readers meet a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry, and philosophy, who were also profoundly committed to cosmic regeneration through the thrust of the ceremonial knife and through warfare.
Download or read book The Aztecs A Very Short Introduction written by David Carrasco and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a very short introduction to the Aztecs using interpretive tools from religious studies and anthropology to uncover the paradox of Aztec life; on the one hand a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry and philosophic rhetoric while on the other hand a people profoundly committed to cosmic regeneration through the thrust of the ceremonial knife and warfare.
Download or read book The Conquistadors A Very Short Introduction written by Matthew Restall and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Very Short Introduction examines the Spanish conquistadors who invaded the Americas in the sixteenth century, as well as the Native American Kingdoms they invaded.
Download or read book North American Indians A Very Short Introduction written by Theda Perdue and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-16 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today? Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, settling throughout North America. They describe hunting practices among different tribes, how some made the gradual transition to more settled, agricultural ways of life, the role of kinship and cooperation in Native societies, their varied burial rites and spiritual practices, and many other features of Native American life. Throughout the book, Perdue and Green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. Most importantly, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty--first with European powers and then with the United States--in order to retain their lands, govern themselves, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful. Going beyond the stereotypes that so often distort our views of Native Americans, this Very Short Introduction offers a historically accurate, deeply engaging, and often inspiring account of the wide array of Native peoples in America. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
Download or read book The Mexican Revolution written by Alan Knight and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mexican Revolution was a 'great' revolution, decisive for Mexico, important within Latin America, and comparable to the other major revolutions of modern history. Alan Knight offers a succinct account of the period, from the initial uprising against Porfirio Diaz and the ensuing decade of civil war, to the enduring legacy of the Revolution.
Download or read book The Maya A Very Short Introduction written by Matthew Restall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maya forged one of the greatest societies in the history of the ancient Americas and in all of human history. Long before contact with Europeans, Maya communities built spectacular cities with large, well-fed large populations. They mastered the visual arts, and developed a sophisticated writing system that recorded extraordinary knowledge in calendrics, mathematics, and astronomy. The Maya achieved all this without area-wide centralized control. There was never a single, unified Maya state or empire, but always numerous, evolving ethnic groups speaking dozens of distinct Mayan languages. The people we call "Maya" never thought of themselves as such; yet something definable, unique, and endlessly fascinating - what we call Maya culture - has clearly existed for millennia. So what was their self-identity and how did Maya civilization come to be "invented?" With the Maya historically subdivided and misunderstood in so many ways, the pursuit of what made them "the Maya" is all the more important. In this Very Short Introduction, Restall and Solari explore the themes of Maya identity, city-state political culture, art and architecture, the Maya concept of the cosmos, and the Maya experience of contact with including invasion by outsiders. Despite its brevity, this book is unique for its treatment of all periods of Maya civilization, from its origins to the present.
Download or read book City of Sacrifice written by David Carrasco and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2000-12-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence? In City of Sacrifice,Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity. Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.
Download or read book Fifth Sun written by Camilla Townsend and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people.
Download or read book Conquistadors and Aztecs written by Stefan Rinke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-06 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly readable narrative of the causes, course, and consequences of the Spanish Conquest, incorporating the perspectives of many Native groups, Black slaves, and the conquistadors, timed with the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.Five hundred years ago, a flotilla landed on the coast of Yucatan under the command of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes. While the official goal of the expedition was to explore and to expand the Christian faith, everyone involved knew that it was primarily about gold and the hunt for slaves.That a few hundred Spaniards destroyed the Aztec empire - a highly developed culture - is an old chestnut, because the conquistadors, who had every means to make a profit, did not succeed alone. They encountered groups such as the Tlaxcaltecs, who suffered from the Aztec rule and were ready to enterinto alliances with the foreigners to overthrow their old enemy. In addition, the conquerors benefited from the diseases brought from Europe, which killed hundreds of thousands of locals. Drawing on both Spanish and indigenous sources, this account of the conquest of Mexico from 1519 to 1521 notonly offers a dramatic narrative of these events - including the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and the flight of the conquerors - but also represents the individual protagonists on both sides, their backgrounds, their diplomacy, and their struggles. It vividly portrays the tens ofthousands of local warriors who faced off against each other during the fighting as they attempted to free themselves from tribute payments to the Aztecs.Written by a leading historian of Latin America, Conquistadors and Aztecs offers a timely portrayal of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the founding of an empire that would last for centuries.
Download or read book Mexico written by Michael D. Coe and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterly....The complexities of Mexico's ancient cultures are perceptively presented and interpreted.--Library Journal
Download or read book African Religions written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.
Download or read book Collision of Worlds written by David M. Carballo and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mexico of five centuries ago was witness to one of the most momentous encounters between human societies, when a group of Spaniards led by Hernando Cortâes joined forces with tens of thousands of Mesoamerican allies to topple the mighty Aztec empire. It served as a template for the forging of much of Latin America and began the globalized world we inhabit today. This violent encounter and the new colonial order it created, a New Spain, was millennia in the making, with independent cultural developments on both sides of the Atlantic and their fateful entanglement during the pivotal Aztec-Spanish war of 1519-1521. Collision of World examines the deep history of this encounter with an archaeological lens-one that considers depth in the richly layered cultures of Mexico and Spain, like the depths that archaeologists reveal through excavation to chart early layers of human history. It offers a unique perspective on the encounter through its temporal depth and focus on the physical world of places and things, their similarities and differences in trans-Atlantic perspective, and their interweaving in an encounter characterized by conquest and colonialism, but also active agency and resilience on the part of Native peoples"--
Download or read book Colonial Latin American Literature written by Rolena Adorno and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the literature of the Spanish-speaking Americas from the time of Columbus to Latin American Independence, this book examines the origins of colonial Latin American literature in Spanish, the writings and relationships among major literary and intellectual figures of the colonial period, and the story of how Spanish literary language developed and flourished in a new context. Authors and works have been chosen for the merits of their writings, their participation in the larger debates of their era, and their resonance with readers today.
Download or read book The Mongols written by Morris Rossabi and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mongols carved out the largest land-based empire in world history, stretching from Korea to Russia in the north and from China to Syria in the south in the thirteenth century. Along with their leader Chinggis Khan they conjure up images of plunder and total destruction. Although this book does not ignore the devastation and killings wrought by the Mongols, it also reveals their contributions to governance, arts, culture, and the promotion of trade. The Mongol peace resulted in considerable travel and relations among numerous merchants, scientists, artists, missionaries, and entertainers of different ethnic groups. It is no accident that Europeans, including Marco Polo, first reached China in this period. Eurasian and perhaps global history starts with the Mongol empire.
Download or read book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest written by Matthew Restall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An update of a popular work that takes on the myths of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, featuring a new afterword. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest reveals how the Spanish invasions in the Americas have been conceived and presented, misrepresented and misunderstood, in the five centuries since Columbus first crossed the Atlantic. This book is a unique and provocative synthesis of ideas and themes that were for generations debated or perpetuated without question in academic and popular circles. The 2003 edition became the foundation stone of a scholarly turn since called The New Conquest History. Each of the book's seven chapters describes one "myth," or one aspect of the Conquest that has been distorted or misrepresented, examines its roots, and explodes its fallacies and misconceptions. Using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, written in a scholarly but readable style, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest explains why Columbus did not set out to prove the world was round, the conquistadors were not soldiers, the native Americans did not take them for gods, Cortés did not have a unique vision of conquest procedure, and handfuls of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. Conquest realities were more complex--and far more fascinating--than conventional histories have related, and they featured a more diverse cast of protagonists-Spanish, Native American, and African. This updated edition of a key event in the history of the Americas critically examines the book's arguments, how they have held up, and why they prompted the rise of a New Conquest History.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology written by Deborah L. Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed by regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies--from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations--and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.
Download or read book Mexico written by Michael D. Coe and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative volume has been revised throughout and expanded, with stunning new images and accounts of the major discoveries of recent years. Recent findings have been added to expand our understanding of the Olmecs outside of their heartland, and new research on the legacy of the Maya offers a wider and more cohesive narrative of Mexico's history. New co-author Javier Urcid has added greater coverage of Oaxaca and of Monté Alban, one of the earliest cities in Mesoamerica and the center of the Zapotec civilization, and a fully revised Epilogue discusses the survival of indigenous populations in Mexico from the Conquest up to the present. This longstanding classic now features full-colour photos of the vibrant art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica throughout.
