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Steve Glassman is a professor of humanities at Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach.

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Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
This isn’t that type of book I would normally pick for this project, but it was a freebie from an early reviewer program. While the book contains a lot of useful information, I would hesitate before recommending it to anyone. It reads more like a textbook than anything else, and doesn’t have the rhetorical pizazz of some modern popular historians. Both the detailed histories and intricate mythologies of the various sites are pretty dense. This alone makes it a little tricky to wade through.

In addition, the illustrations in this book are a mixed bag. There are great pictures of actual artifacts and ruins (although only in black and white), but the maps are slightly crude. Granted, you wouldn’t use this book to actually traverse the Yucatan Peninsula, it still creates a jarring juxtaposition. On the plus side, the bibliography is fairly extensive and contains many other related works that might be worth reading.

http://lifelongdewey.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/972-cities-of-the-maya-in-seven-ep...
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NielsenGW | 11 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 12, 2012 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
I have been an avid reader of books about archaeology since the tender age of five when my father introduced me to Budge's books on Ancient Egypt. Later, as a college history major, I took a course on Aztec history as an elective, to add a little spice to the otherwise boring curriculum of European and American history. Currently at age 62, I contribute to history as a demonstrator and re-enacter of 19th Century American History. So it was with anticipation that I received a copy of "Cities of the Maya" to review.

My first impression of the book was that it would be a good read. As it turns out, one of the authors is a professor of Humanities, and has written books of fiction as well as taught English and creative writing. The other is a real life archaeologist, a native of the country which is home to the Maya. This book was so engaging that I hated to put it down. In one chapter, Glassman has put flesh and blood to the stone carvings on a stela which was created to impress people with the power and glory of the current warrior king, Great Jaguar Paw. We get to know the thoughts in the mind of this great king as he faces the biggest challenge of his life, and the setting in which he places his trust -- the ceremony of the ball court. I will leave you to read the book to see what happens to him and his city.

For a more academic look at the book, it begins with a fine introduction outlining the lives of the many explorers and archaeologists who faced dangerous and harsh conditions to locate and uncover the past. Then the narrative continues through the many eras of Mayan history, starting with the preceeding civilization of the Olmecs which gave rise to the cultural milieu for the Maya to create their long lasting empire which still exists in the present as a background for the countries of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

The text is accompanied by maps, illustrating the interrelationship between Mayan city-states, and by some black and white photos of significant buildings, stelae, and carvings which are examples of history and culture. These exhibits enhance the narrative by showing the faces of some of the rulers and the very imposing structures which were built to support the system of the divine king who ruled with the permission of the Mayan gods and acted as an intermediary between the people and the cosmos.

Mayan religion, which has been shown to be particulary blood-thirsty, worked for over two thousand years. Unlike the Aztecs who were late comers to the neighborhood, the Mayan ruling class made the personal sacrifice of their own blood in a ritual that was part of other ceremonies, such as the sacred ball game. These practices, and why they were so important, are discussed in the text.

Once a great mystery, the downfall of this elaborate religious state, has now been explained. Many different factors combined to cause the Mayan state to collapse in on itself. They include climate change, the failure of the divine king centered political system, and the conquest by the Spanish conquistadores. Two of the great gifts given to the world by this culture are it's elaborate art and architecture, and the most detailed and accurate calendar system that continue to fascinate us all today.

I hated for this book to come to a close, but like all epic novels, the story does come to an end. Unlike a novel, this book would make an excellent text book for a Mesoamerican History class. The annotated bibliography at the back of the book gives the reader a chance to continue his reading about the Maya and further immerse himself in the many gifts this civilization has brought to the world.
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drj | 11 weitere Rezensionen | Jul 19, 2011 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
I hesitated before actually picking up this book and reading it. I feared that I might get bored reading about an area I know little about. But that was not the case. As I read through the "seven epochs" this book covers, I found that I really wanted to continue and find out more the Maya and their history and culture. The Maya people inhabited, and still inhabit the Yucatan peninsula, located in southern Mexico, but also comprising Belize, and much of Guatemala. This may have been the most advanced civilization in the Western Hemisphere, with vast step pyramids, and the use of a detailed calendar. We can trace much of their history through their writing.

The Mayan hit their peak around 700 CE, when parts of their peninsula began to suffer a long term drought, so many of the Mayan sites became overgrown. When the Spanish conquistadors came in the 1500's, it was not possible for them to see the greatness of the Mayas. And the big use of human sacrifice also made it hard for them to appreciate Mesoamerica peoples.

The seven epochs start with the Olmec period, significant, if not properly Mayan. The epoch of the Mirador basin (after 1000 BCE) deals with religion and architecture. The third epoch is the story of the city of Tikal(250-550 CE), whose ruins were not discovered until the 1840's. This was a grand city with temples surrounding an "Acropolis." The fourth epoch charts the rise of Calakmul, a competing "superpower". The fifth epoch takes the reader through their greatness, but brings in the rivals outside the Mayan direct territory of Copan to the southeast and Teotihuacan near Mexico City. The sixth epoch is the one of decay (800-1100). The final epoch brings in the conquering Europeans. The struggle by the Mayans to have some kind of independend lasted actually to 1903, when the Mexico secured its full dominance in th region.

The authors do pay attention to domestic life in the cities, food and housing, beyond that of the great architecture and shamanistic type religion, which are usually discussed.

I would have liked to see a map showing how the Mayan speaking territory compares with the current political boundaries of the three countries covered. This book sits half-way between being an academic treatise and a popularising book, so it might not satifsy everyone.
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vpfluke | 11 weitere Rezensionen | Jul 4, 2011 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
From about the time of the Trojan War, through the waxing and waning of Greek and Roman classic culture, up to just about the time that the Renaissance, printing, and empire builders spread Western learning across the world, a vast and complex civilization grew across Central America. It built some of the largest cities in the world, with monumental architecture and ingenious infrastructure, supporting widespread commerce. It developed written language. Astronomy and mathematics led to the most accurate calendar in the world. Despite the catastrophic destruction of knowledge perpetrated by the Conquistadors and their priests, the archeological record and a few surviving documents provide a wealth of data about the Olmec, the Maya, and their contemporaries. The data can be spotty and conflicting, but the shadowy history of this great civilization is emerging.

Unfortunately, Steve Glassman and Armando Anaya are not up to the task of telling that story in Cities of the Maya in Seven Epochs. First, the reader has to get past the frequent typos, and a few thinkos as well. There is no evidence of any copy-editing. There are passages that read like a BabelFish translation. More serious is the problem of the organization of the material. The ostensible scheme is to focus on seven successive time periods, looking at the dominant cities and culture in each. The main problem is that the authors haven't decided whether they are telling the story of the Maya or the story of the explorers, archeologists, and scientists who are uncovering and deciphering it. Since discovery doesn't happen in the order of the underlying history, there are competing timelines here, resulting in a lot of back-and-forth. While there are a lot of facts and a lot of detail, at times it seems an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative.

There is an extensive and useful list of references and an adequate index. However, despite all the facts and detail included, the book's usefulness as a reference itself is limited by the absence of any footnoting, although some sources are identified within the text. There are also rather more conjectural passages than would be common in an academic treatment and they are not always clearly delineated from the factual record.

Overall, perhaps, the book tries to do too many things to do any one thing very well.
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Larxol | 11 weitere Rezensionen | Jun 19, 2011 |

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