A MOTHER AND SON FIGHT TO PRESERVE THEIR DYNASTY... Sak K'uk, the daughter of the first ruler of a powerful Mayan city, faces rebellious nobles and spiritual crisis in her city following a devastating enemy attack. The sacred portal to the Gods is desecrated, temples and crops destroyed and the was ruler killed. With her city in chaos and leaderless, Sak K'uk undertakes a perilous Underworld journey to seek help. After encountering the Underworld Goddess, Sak K'uk rises above the opposition and holds the throne for her young son. She knows that a Mayan prophecy foretold her son’s destiny to become ruler. The intense trials of mother and son forge a special bond that proves both a blessing…and a curse. Enter the ancient Mayan world of jungle-draped stone cities with soaring pyramids and broad plazas gleaming in tropical sun. Experience the turbulent court intrigue wrapped in dazzling rituals common to the bizarre Maya Underworld. Follow the story of this strong-willed young ruler, as she and her son battle to restore their city to greatness at any cost. "The author has great skills at world building and crafting a fantasy story that will keep the reader engaged and entertained from cover to cover. Great author voice and writing style...an entertaining mix." ~Writer's Digest

"Readers are brought along for a journey filled with every imaginable emotion in the course of a heroine’s lifetime. As a result, a world that is stunningly beautiful and complete without ours—but intractably connected—surges through the pages of the book." – Reader Views She was born to serve the Goddess Ix Chel. But K'inuuw Mat is destined to continue the Palenque (Lakam Ha) dynasty by marriage to Tiwol, fourth son of famous ruler Pakal. Trained in prophetic arts, she uses scrying to foresee the face of the man with whom she will bear the dynastic heir—but it is not her husband's image. She is shocked upon arriving at Palenque to recognize that face as her husband's older brother, Kan Bahlam. They are immediately attracted, sharing deep interest in astronomy. Though she resists, the magnetic force of their attraction propels them into forbidden embraces, until Kan Bahlam designs a bold plan that would solve his inability to produce a son—if he can gain his brother's cooperation. Set in the splendor of Lakam Ha's artistic and scientific zenith, royal family conflicts and ambitions play out in a tapestry of brilliant Mayan accomplishments in calendars, astronomy, architecture, arts, and secret language codes that will astound people centuries later. As K'inuuw Mat contends with explosive emotions, she must answer the Goddess' mandate to preserve Mayan culture for future generations. Her passion with Kan Bahlam leads to a pale daughter and bold son who carry this out as their civilization begins the decline and eventual collapse her prophetic vision foresees. One great cycle rolls into the next . . . Contemporary Mexican archeologist Francesca and her partner Charlie, a British linguist, venture into Chiapas jungles to a remote Maya village, seeking to unravel her grandmother's secrets. The hostile village shaman holds the key, but refuses to share with outsiders the scandal that leads to foreign blood and ancient Palenque lineages. Only by re-claiming her own shamanic heritage can Francesca learn the truth of who she is, and bring her dynasty into the present.

Enter the world of a Mayan Queen Yohl Ik'nal, first Mayan woman ruler, must overcome forces opposing her rule . . . betrayal and revenge, attack by enemy cities, and shamanic powers. Using her visionary ability, she saves her city from destruction, builds temples to honor her father and the Gods, and brings prosperity to her people while finding a love that sustains her. But she foresees a time of darkness and devastation coming. Danger lurks ahead and she must choose a successor, either her weak son or willful daughter. Can she trust her vision to reveal the will of the Gods? The results of her choice will lead to ruin or bring her city to greatness. Discover the opulent world of royal court intrigue, exotic ceremonies on towering pyramids, shamanic journeys, calendars and healing sciences of the ancient Mayas. Experience the excitement of sacrificial rituals and strategic battles for dominance in this exquisite city soaring in mountain mists. A dynasty hangs in the balance . . .

The ancient Maya city of Lakam Ha has a new, young ruler, K'inich Janaab Pakal. His mother and prior ruler, Sak K’uk, has selected his wife, the next queen. Lalak is a shy and homely young woman from a nearby city who relates better to animals than people. She is chosen as Pakal’s wife because of her pristine lineage to B’aakal dynasty founders ̶ but also because she is no beauty. Arriving at Lakam Ha, she is overwhelmed by its sophisticated, complex society and expectations of the royal court. Her mother-in-law, Sak K’uk, is critical and hostile, resenting any intrusion between herself and her son. She chose Lalak to avoid being displaced in Pakal’s affections, and does everything she can to keep it this way. The official name she confers on Lalak exposes her view of the girl as a breeder of future rulers: Tz’aabk’u Ahau, the Accumulator of Lords who sets the royal succession. Lalak struggles to learn her new role and prove her worth, facing challenges in her relationship with Pakal, for he is enamored of a beautiful woman banished from Lakam Ha by his mother. Pakal’s esthetic tastes and love of beauty affect his view of his homely wife. Lalak, however, is fated to play a pivotal role in Pakal’s mission to restore the spiritual portal to the Triad Gods that was destroyed in a devastating attack by archenemy Kan. Through learning sexual alchemy, Lalak brings the immense creative force of sacred union to rebuild the portal, but first Pakal must come to view his wife in a new light. In modern times, ten years after the discovery of the Red Queen's tomb, archeologist Francesca is studying new research about this mysterious royal woman in Mérida, Mexico. She teams up with British linguist Charlie to decipher an ancient manuscript left by her deceased grandmother. It provides clues about her grandmother's secrets that propel them into exploring her family history in a remote Maya village.

A chronological survey of Mayan literature, covering two thousand years, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to later works using the Roman alphabet.

Front Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1: The History of Mayan Literacy -- 2: Oral and Written Uses of Mayan Languages -- 3: Issues of Personal Literacy Use in the Maya Communities -- 4: Print Media in Mayan Languages -- 5: Environmental Print -- 6: Mayan Literacy in Education -- 7: Weaving the Threads of Mayan Literacy -- Afterword -- Glossary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Back Cover

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

With new readings of ancient texts, Ancient Maya Politics unlocks the long-enigmatic political system of the Classic Maya.

“A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee