Here are 63 books that Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens fans have personally recommended if you like
Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens.
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As an archaeologist, I love prehistoric things and what can I learn from them about the people that made them and left them behind. I study ancient Maya commoners in what is now modern Guatemala. Their material remains are humble but include depictions and symbols normally found in the palaces of Maya kings and queens. First I wondered and then I studied how the title-giving war owl fell into the hands of Maya commoners. By approaching this process as innovation, I discuss creativity in the past and cultural changes that result from it.
This book introduced the concept of nudging into the public discourse, and I guess all of us have encountered it one way or the other. How many reminders have I gotten to sign up for this or that program?⊠Alas, I love Thaler and Sunstein's concept of choice architects. It made me think about power as a capacity to affect not only people but also the very framework in which people make decisions.
The original edition of the multimillion-copy New York Times bestseller by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Richard H. Thaler, and Cass R. Sunstein: a revelatory look at how we make decisionsâfor fans of Malcolm Gladwellâs Blink, Charles Duhiggâs The Power of Habit, James Clearâs Atomic Habits, and Daniel Kahnemanâs Thinking, Fast and Slow
Named a Best Book of the Year by TheEconomist and the Financial Times
Every day we make choicesâabout what to buy or eat, about financial investments or our childrenâs health and education, even about the causes we championâŠ
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runâŠ
The essential feature of democratic capitalism is creative destructionâput simply, constant innovation in the products and services we produce and how we produce them. My book gives a history of electricity and demonstrates the wide-angle lens we must use to fully understand this sort of innovation. The books I recommend here are among the absolute best in this regard. Importantly, in Cold War II, China is challenging America with state capitalism and creative destruction is at the heart of the battle. I have a Ph.D. in Economics and founded a consulting company that assessed new technologies in the energy sector for over 30 years.
I love this book because of the compelling answer it gives to one of the most fundamental questions: why are some nations rich and others poor? The answer is that it depends on the political and economic institutions in place, with wealth accruing to nations with âinclusive institutions.â Put simply, nations with intellectual and economic freedom are richer.
Why does freedom matter? Because freedom opens the stage to Schumpeterâs creative destruction! The authors prove this, remarkably, through examples from around the globe, and they even use examples thousands of years apart in history. This is a must read to understand the way in which creative destruction drives prosperity both today and historically.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012.
Why are some nations more prosperous than others? Why Nations Fail sets out to answer this question, with a compelling and elegantly argued new theory: that it is not down to climate, geography or culture, but because of institutions. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, from ancient Rome through the Tudors to modern-day China, leading academics Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson show that to invest and prosper, people need to know that if they work hard, they can make moneyâŠ
As an archaeologist, I love prehistoric things and what can I learn from them about the people that made them and left them behind. I study ancient Maya commoners in what is now modern Guatemala. Their material remains are humble but include depictions and symbols normally found in the palaces of Maya kings and queens. First I wondered and then I studied how the title-giving war owl fell into the hands of Maya commoners. By approaching this process as innovation, I discuss creativity in the past and cultural changes that result from it.
Sociological theory poses the fascinating question of how people create society. Giddens' book offers one of the most compelling and lucidly written answers. He discusses individuals as agents and how our decisions have ripple effects â intended or not â that affect others. Social systems and the structures they consist of are constraining and enabling our behaviors. Society is like language and practices like speech: to communicate, we require vocabulary and grammar; at the same time, a language can't survive if nobody speaks it.
Anthony Giddens has been in the forefront of developments in social theory for the past decade. In "The Constitution of Society" he outlines the distinctive position he has evolved during that period and offers a full statement of a major new perspective in social thought, a synthesis and elaboration of ideas touched on in previous works but described here for the first time in an integrated and comprehensive form. A particular feature is Giddens' concern to connect abstract problems of theory to an interpretation of the nature of empirical method in the social sciences. In presenting his own ideas, GiddensâŠ
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother hadâŠ
Iâve loved learning about history since childhood, as attested by my bookshelves full of American Girl series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and The Royal Diaries (Cleopatra was my favorite). After writing my first book about reenactors pretending to be French explorers, I worked as a history writer for Smithsonian Magazine. I especially love the philosophical and political questions of how we still interact with the past and how history is presented. I hope youâll enjoy thinking about that and learning some history from these books!
If you want to learn about pre-industrial life in Europe, there is no better book than this. Langlands travels across multiple countries, learning how to spin wool, herd sheep, and thatch roofsâskills that were once necessary for daily life but have vanished in an age of mass production.
I love the care with which Langlands undertakes these skills and the way he conveys his respect for the masters who keep these traditional crafts alive. As a kid, I dreamed of visiting the past because I wanted to see what the tangible, daily world looked and felt like. Through Langlandsâ book, it felt like I got to visit that world.Â
Faced with an endless supply of mass-manufactured products, we find ourselves nostalgic for goods bearing the mark of authenticity-hand-made tools, local brews, and other objects produced by human hands. Archaeologist and medieval historian Alexander Langlands reaches as far back as the Neolithic period to recover our lost sense of craft, combining deep history with detailed scientific analyses and his own experiences making traditional crafts. Craft brims with vivid storytelling, rich descriptions of natural landscape, and delightful surprises that will convince us to introduce more craft into our lives.
Ryan Murdock is Editor-at-Large (Europe) for Outpost, Canadaâs national travel magazine, and a weekly columnist for The Shift, an independent Maltese news portal. His feature articles have taken him across a remote stretch of Canadaâs Northwest Territories on foot, into the Central Sahara in search of prehistoric rock art, and around Wales with a drug squad detective hunting for the real King Arthur.
Far from being an extinct people swallowed by the jungle-like their famous temples, the Maya make up a significant percentage of the population of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, with vibrant ancient languages that are still spoken today. This beautifully written account of contemporary Maya culture will help you understand a remarkable people who explored the world through arithmetic and time.
"Cut Stones and Crossroads" and "On Fiji Island" are previous books by Ronald Wright, author of this book concerned with the Maya, who in the first millennium AD, created the most intellectually and artistically advanced civilization native to the Americas. Despite a mysterious collapse in the ninth century and Spanish invasion in the 16th century, some five million people throughout Guatemala, Belize and south-eastern Mexico still speak Maya languages and preserve a Maya identity today. Ronald Wright set out to discover the roots of the Maya and the extent of their survival after centuries of invasion and a recent civilâŠ
I love history that is about people. The discoveries they made or the adventures they had (or endured) are thrilling and fascinating, but itâs the people who make it compelling. From Ernest Shackleton dumping handfuls of gold on the ice to show his stranded men he was committed to getting them out of Antarctica alive, to a fussy young William Travis writing desperately for help that would never come, and being of the first to die during the attack on the AlamoâŠthe best books make those events, the times, and the stakes very very real. And the very best histories give you the humanity of the choices and decisions that led them there.
One of the real contagions of contemporary life (for anyone in any time, I suspect) is the way one can become complacent about the existence we are experiencing: we can take âwhat everyone knowsâ for granted. Like the Ferris Wheel, which was invented for the Chicago Worldâs Fair to outshine the previous Fairâs Effiel Tower. Now, any carnival midway or small circus has one. The same with many âancient ruins.â Cruise ships stop at Minos or the Mexican pyramids for organized tours. But these places had been lost for millennia until they were re-discovered in the last 200 â 300 years. In Jungles ofStone, the initial discovery was almost an accident. Seen as an opportunity by Stephens and Catherwood, the magnificence and majesty of what they find converts their commercial enterprise into something more like a crusade. While the book recounts their arduous efforts to uncover the lostâŠ
New York Times Bestseller (Expeditions) * THE "MASTERFUL CHRONICLE"* OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE LEGENDARY LOST CIVILIZATION OF THE MAYA--AN "ADVENTURE TALE THAT MAKES INDIANA JONES LOOK TAME"* In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood-both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome-sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. WhatâŠ
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man sheâŠ
Iâve been fascinated by Maya religion since collegeâever since I took my first class on Maya hieroglyphics at Tulane University. At first, I was drawn to the visuals accompanying the glyphs: women running ropes through their tongues, men holding hands with gods, and animals (spirits) wielding sacrificial knives. Then I began chasing the meanings of those visuals until I found myself specializing in ancient Maya mortuary behavior and receiving a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. I am happy to say that I am still on the chase, having written or edited five books (with two more on the way). I hope you enjoy this list!
When I think about ancient Maya religion, the first thing that comes to mind is pageantry; I imagine kings performing in front of a crowd, or perhaps nobles bloodletting for a small audience inside a palace. Magic and witchcraft are an afterthought. They are front and center in this bookâas they were in ancient Mesoamerica. This collection of essays forced me to abandon the habitual boundaries between magic, religion, and witchcraft in the Maya area (and I am better for it). If you are looking for a book where rulers summon monsters and witchcraft is a way of life, this is the place to start.
I grew up in Valladolid, a semi-rural city of Yucatan. My parents loved the history and archaeology of the Yucatan peninsula, which not long ago was a single cultural and linguistic entity. I grew up dreaming of becoming an archaeologist. With time, I became fascinated with people and sociality within and beyond Yucatan, so I became an anthropologist. I trained as an anthropologist in Mexico and Canada, and have done research in Canada, Italy, Mexico, and Spain. I live and work in Yucatan, as a professor of anthropology. Good ethnographies are what anthropology is about, and those I write about here are some of the best.
In the 1970s, my parents took me and my siblings to the Camino Real, one of the first hotels ever built in Cancun.
We sat on canvas chairs on the beach and my dad played the guitar. Fiddler crabs walked around us, the stars shone brightly, and we enjoyed the music and the sound of crashing waves. Tourism and its evils, however, soon became a nightmare for peninsular Yucatecans.
Through the city of Cancun, the natural reserve Calakmul, the village of Tekit and the hotels in former sisal haciendas, this ethnography shows how, even when living standards improved, local people have become geographically immobilized and resource-impoverished.
The tourist industry is predatory. It destroys natural resources, transforms places into what the rich think of as paradise, and displaces and disempowers local people.
Tourism has become one of the most powerful forces organizing the predatory geographies of late capitalism. It creates entangled futures of exploitation and dependence, extracting resources and labor, and eclipsing other ways of doing, living, and imagining life. And yet, tourism also creates jobs, encourages infrastructure development, and in many places inspires the only possibility of hope and well-being. Stuck with Tourism explores the ambivalent nature of tourism by drawing on ethnographic evidence from the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, a region voraciously transformed by tourism development over the past forty years. Contrasting labor and lived experiences at the beach resorts ofâŠ
My father introduced me to the world as we paged through his old pre-WWII atlas. We traced borders and rivers with our fingers and he spoke names that were magical incantations and invitations to a world more exciting and mysterious than our midwestern home. As a reader, I was drawn to books about travel and as a budding writer, I was inspired by the adventures of âBrenda Starr, Girl Reporterâ featured in the Sunday comics of my youth. I packed my bags early and my passport is never out of date. I continue to read traveloirs, and I write in my journal every day. Oh! The places I will go.
With this âtraveloir,â Mary Morris showed me how to do it: How to travel alone as a single woman when you didnât have a plan or an agenda; how to write about people and places that bring them alive; how to find your own story in your travels and in your writing.
Mary Morris published this book in 1989, the year before I set off on my ownâa (much older) single woman traveling without a plan or agenda. As I opened the yellowed pages again, after many years, I read this line: âI settled into loneliness once again.â Next year Iâll be traveling to San Miguel de Allende, one of the settings in Nothing to Declare. I may take this book with me and read it again.Â
Chronicling her travels throughout Central America, the author offers an unvarnished view of the precarious realitie's of everyday life in a harsh and ruthless land
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the worldâs most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the bookâŠ
Peter Matthiessen was considered one of Americaâs great wilderness writers. Yet in an interview, before he died in 2014, Matthiessen identified Far Tortuga as his personal favorite of all the books he had written. In this novel, Matthiessen offers a fictional account of his participation on one of the last turtle hunting voyages in the Caribbean. Drawing on his experience on the said voyage in the 1960s, Matthiessen vividly displays his keen observation skills with his depictions of the Caymanian turtle hunters and the challenges of this last generation of turtlemen.Â
This adventure story is set in the Caribbean and describes the last voyage of the "Lillias Eden", an old wooden schooner employed in the turtle trade. The author's previous books include "The Snow Leopard", "Men's Lives", "The Cloud Forest" and "Under the Mountain Wall".
