Over the last two centuries explorers have made the most remarkable discoveries in the tropical forests of Central America. Across much of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras dozens of cities - some with populations of well over 100,000 - have been unveiled, and every year fresh reports emerge of the findings of unknown Maya ruins - great temples, palaces, towering stone pyramids and the tombs of the Maya kings. What these spectacular discoveries indicate is the former presence of an exceptionally advanced, sophisticated and complex society. Recently, major developments made in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics have revealed that alongside the material achievements of the Maya ran intellectual accomplishments in astronomy, maths and calendrics, seemingly tied to the complexities of Maya religion, that were remarkable for a society technically in the Stone Age. From reliefs on temple walls, from magnificent hieroglyphic stairways and from stone stelae planted by Maya rulers in the plazas of their cities has come written history: the Chronicles of the Maya Kings.
In this fascinating book, David Drew brings to life this extraordinary civilisation. He answers questions about why they constructed their cities in the hostile setting of the jungle, the exact age of their ruins, the strange human images depicted in elaborate costume at so many Maya sites, and he asks why at the time of the Spanish conquest, all knowledge of the Mayas had been lost. He looks at their history, art, architecture, political systems, religion, and, finding that the Maya are not in fact a lost or dead people - there are still five million descendants living in Mexico - considers the ways in which their society today illuminates that of their ancestors.

Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings

History

DREW, DAVID

Americas

Univ. of California Press

This book, after a discussion of ideology in its first part, attempts to answer the question of how Chinese Communist organization functions and why it is so successful. The second part analyzes the organization of the Party and government, emphasizing methods of command and administration. The third part looks at industrial organization and the problems of management and control, especially the continuing struggle between professionals and the politicians. The fourth part investigates the Chinese Communist methods of organizing their cities and villages.

Ideology and Organization in Communist China

Schurmann, Franz

Introduction to the Natural History of the San Francisco Bay Region (California Natural History Guides)

Science & Math

Smith, Arthur Clayton

Nature & Ecology

Theories Of Modern Art - A Source Book By Artists and Critics

Theories of Modern Art

Arts & Photography

SELZ, Peter

Chipp, Herschel B.

History & Criticism

This volume surveys the complete range of the Darwin's accomplishments, offering a coherent and consistent treatment of the flow of ideas throughout Darwin's works. Ghiselin constructs a unified theoretical system that explains the major features of Darwin's investigations, evaluating the literature from a historical, scientific, and philosophical perspective.

The Triumph of the Darwinian Method

Biographies & Memoirs

GHISELIN, Michael T.

Professionals & Academics

The Private Sector in Soviet Agriculture (Russian and East European Studies)

Business & Money

Karl-Eugen Wadekin

Economics

Six, years after Mark Twain's death, Albert Bigelow Paine, the author's literary executor, brought out a bowdlerized edition of The Mysterious Stranger, silently cut and cobbled from three unfinished manuscripts. This volume presents those manuscripts for the first time, exactly as mark Twain wrote them.Paine's disingenuous account of the history of his edition has, until recently, misled critics into believing that Mark Twain's creative abilities deserted him for a time, only to be recovered in the composition of The Mysterious Stranger. By writing this tale, said Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain "saved himself in the end, and came back from the edge of insanity, and found as much peace as any man may find in his last years, and brought his talent into fruition and made it whole again." Although most critics have praised the work as the finest fiction of Mark Twain's later years, Paine and his collaborator, Frederick A. Duneka, so changed many of the book's essentials that it does not fully or accurately reflect the author's mood and thought.Paine's edition of the book was based, for the most part, on the earliest of the three versions, written during the time of Mark Twain's supposed creative paralysis. He and Duneka suppressed a quarter of the text of this manuscript and grafted onto it the last chapter of the latest version. Mark Twain began the first manuscript, "The Chronicle of Young Satan," in 1897; late in 1898, he tried to recast the story in a Hannibal setting, then returned to his first version, only to abandon it permanently in 1900. Between 1902 and 1908, he worked on the third and longest version, the only one the author called "The Mysterious Stranger."The publication of these texts therefore offers an opportunity to observe Mark Twain's sustained literary struggle with a central theme and to reevaluate the tantalizing question of the author's late work.

Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

Literature & Fiction

Mark, Twain

Cohen, Abner, Custom And Politics In Urban Africa: A Study Of Hausa Migrants In

Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns

Politics & Social Sciences

Cohen, Abner

Social Sciences

New Documentary in Action: Casebook in Film Making [Oct 28, 1971] Rosenthal, Alan ...

The new documentary in action;: A casebook in film making

Rosenthal, Alan

Performing Arts

Muybridge (1830-1904) was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. This book examines Muybridge's skill as a photographer and demonstrates his experimental work.

Muybridge: Man in Motion

Haas, Robert Bartlett

Arts & Literature

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