Product Review

A superb guide to eleven of the `most influential and best-known kingdoms' that helped to shape Mayan history, including 152 biographical accounts of 152 kings and 4 ruling queens. Written by two of the foremost experts on Mayan hieroglyphic decipherment, this book includes a concise text accompanied by a timeline, illustrations, maps, photographs, useful summaries and guides to decipherment and spellings. It outlines the major periods of history and aspects of Mayan culture before focusing on issues of divinity, power and authority, the royal court, war, death and burial and politics for each of the kingdoms studied: Tikal, Dos Pilas, Naranjo, Caracol, Calakmul, Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, Palenque, Tonina, Copan and Quirigua.