They sing, laugh, and yell.”. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. Fast and free shipping free returns cash on delivery available on eligible purchase. One flaw I have is that I wish the notes would be on their corresponding pages as I hate flipping back and forth to read any extra information that pertains to what I read. There is a decent amount of notes, bibliography and references. Her commanding grasp of the primary source material is the hallmark of masterful scholar. No signup or install needed. The Aztecs suddenly appear as real people, rather than the exotic, bloody figures of stereotypes. Sometime in the mid-1300s, they settled on a marshy island in the middle of a lake and built a town called Tenochtitlan. Would he have neglected to include such a detail? For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity, in an account based solely on the texts written by the people themselves. Moctezuma emerges as a pragmatic and calculating ruler, neither cowardly nor fatalistic. [Camilla Townsend] -- "Five hundred years ago, in November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. Sign Up The closest ancillary to any people group that would have considered themselves a cohesive group is the Mexica (meh-HEE-kah), and the Mexica have all of the characteristics and most of the territory that is commonly attributed to the Aztecs, so Townsend only uses the word “Aztec” in the introduction (and I will do the same). Stay informed. The Temple of Warriors, Chichén Itzá, Yucatán. --History Today "Shows the Mexica empire in a fresh, thrilling new light." They participated in a vast amount of human sacrifice because they wanted to appease the gods. It was very frustrating for me but perhaps it will please other readers who like her style. Something I feared lost for Mesoamerica, the true voice of its original people, suddenly sounds out loud and clear. Everyday low … (Erroneously called Aztecs, more on this below). Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2020. Moctezuma’s empire has fallen, but so too has the Spanish. While purchasing books online, it is very difficult to know what the physical book will actually look like. I think that is a monumental achievement. As a layman I’m equally impressed by both the depth of her work and how accessible it remains to an amateur like myself. You have the added fun of the “learn to pronounce it like a native” game throughout the book. Fifth sun : a new history of the Aztecs. Note the pictures in the description above, which are in color from other reviews and in the Amazon listing. The religion of their ancestors, Townsend writes, “was premised on the notion of a carefully maintained record of a succession of imploding and renewing worlds, none of which was ever to be entirely forgotten”. Purchase. A reader of this book will come away with a new understanding of their remarkable history. AbeBooks.com: Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs (9780190673062) by Townsend, Camilla and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices. The best histories are those that upend everything you were taught in history class. In his diary, Dürer enthused about a golden sun “a whole fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the same size”, plus “all kinds of wonderful objects”. By the time they arrived in Tenochtitlan, backed by thousands of the Aztecs’ indigenous foes, it was clear he could not beat them on the battlefield. Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2020. A reader of this book will come away with a new understanding of their remarkable history. No full size color images, which I would have thought would be included for the price of the book. Tag Archives: Fifth Sun – A New History of the Aztecs 2020 Cundill History Prize Winner. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. By doing that the beauty and the lyricism of the Nahua language, the world view of these people, their aspirations and fears and their culture come to a new, vivid live for the reader. (Erroneously called Aztecs, more on this below). The Mexica, one of many Nahuatl-speaking peoples who migrated south from the deserts of what is now the American south-west into the fertile central valley of Mexico, were relative latecomers, arriving after most of the good land was taken. It did not help that until recently most of the textual sources on the Aztecs were accounts prepared by the Spanish. There's a problem loading this menu right now. First among them is the woman baptised by the Spanish as Marina and known in Nahuatl as Malintzin, re-hispanicised as Malinche – a name that would become a synonym for traitor. “In the annals,” she writes, “we can hear the Aztecs talking. Highly recommended. • Fifth Sun is published by Oxford (RRP £19.99). Most illuminating element to me was the Aztec fear of being attacked by others, influencing their reaction to the Spanish first contact group as they realized they could not defeat them. Around 50% on my kindle the book essentially ended save for notes, appendices etc. --History Today "Shows the Mexica empire in a fresh, thrilling new light." The links below are to articles reporting on the winner of the 2020 Cundill History Prize, Camilla Townsend for ‘Fifth Sun: A new history of the Aztecs’. Purchase. Camilla Townsend. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. I put the book down and gave up on it but I do give it two stars because of the obvious expertise and enthusiasm of the author. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. The indigenous sources are also more plausible. n the summer of 1520, the artist Albrecht Dürer viewed a sampling of the treasures the conquistador Hernán Cortés had recently shipped to Europe from the land that would later be called. I would have rather had this book in paperback and the money the publisher spent on the hardback had been spent on colored images and more image content. That is simply the name used by Europeans to describe these groups of natives that were similar in culture and geography but never had a common government or territory. By the end of the next century, it would be the capital of an empire, a “shimmering, aquatic world” of gardens, canals, aqueducts, orderly streets and causeways, a grand palace and a pyramid at the centre of the city, schools for all their children, markets stocked with sumptuous luxuries and all the necessities required by the island city’s 50,000 inhabitants, a population comparable to London’s or Seville’s. Townsend has elsewhere devoted an entire book, Matlintzin’s Choices, to her resurrection. The epilogue and last bit on how the narrative was compiled is as good as the story. Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2020. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Prisoners were sacrificed in regular temple rituals – lots of them, by Moctezuma’s time – but this practice, Townsend argues, was not as central to the Aztec political order as some scholars have made it seem. As Camilla Townsend’s Fifth Sun makes clear, none of these narratives are as clear-cut as they seem, and one is simply false. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs - Ebook written by Camilla Townsend. The cosmology of the Aztecs, their calendar, gods and myths, get only glancing treatment here. Ms. Townsend learned Nahuatl so she could read indigenous sources. Camilla Townsend has won the 2020 Cundill History Prize for her work on Aztec history, Fifth Sun: A new history of the Aztecs (OUP), reports the Bookseller. The value of Fifth Sun lies in how it rescues Aztecs and Nahuas from centuries of colonialist caricature and renders them human again - fully human, with flaws, people capable of brutal violence but also of deep love." To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. This is not light reading, but it’s as close as you are likely going to come to a real history of these peoples. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. The value of Fifth Sun lies in how it rescues Aztecs and Nahuas from centuries of colonialist caricature and renders them human again - fully human, with flaws, people capable of brutal violence but also of deep love." Despite the subtitle “A New History of the Aztecs,” however, “Fifth Sun” does not offer a comprehensive overview of pre-Columbian Aztec history, focusing on … Less strong and more tragic is Don Luis de Santa María Cipac, the last tlatoani, or king, of noble Aztec blood to govern his people under the yoke of Spanish rule. The author has a real knack for making the history fascinating, almost a page turner. Metal weapons, crossbows and cannons gave the Spanish formidable advantages. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. Buy Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Townsend, Camilla online on Amazon.ae at best prices. Stanford Libraries' official online search tool for books, media, journals, databases, government documents and more. Tenochtitlan is gone, razed and rebuilt as the capital of a country in which indigenous traditions remain vital and more than 1.5 million people still speak Nahuatl, more than Welsh or Basque or Chechen. The spread of smallpox sealed the deal. It's a history of the Aztecs/Mexica from an indigenous perspective and not a Spanish one, which alone makes it fascinating. Listen to Camilla Townsend, "Fifth Sun: A New History Of The Aztecs" (Oxford UP, 2019) and 358 more episodes by New Books In Latin American Studies, free! Get this from a library! Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Townsend, Camilla at AbeBooks.co.uk - ISBN 10: 0190673060 - ISBN 13: 9780190673062 - OUP USA - 2020 - Hardcover Townsend’s recent book, Fifth Sun: a New History of the Aztecs, presents the members of this society in a more nuanced light. The winner of the 2020 Cundill History Prize is Camilla Townsend, Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University, for Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs (Oxford University Press USA). With Fifth Sun, Camilla Townsend has offered a powerful, intelligently written overview of the people of central Mexico. A famous narrative turned on its head – how the Spanish conquistadors, not the Aztecs, were driven by bloodlust, Last modified on Fri 14 Feb 2020 13.35 GMT, In the summer of 1520, the artist Albrecht Dürer viewed a sampling of the treasures the conquistador Hernán Cortés had recently shipped to Europe from the land that would later be called Mexico. Altogether a more tenuous imperial governance and hold on power over other groups than I have read about elsewhere - in other words it was pretty easy for the Spanish to secure local allies - they didnt need much persuading. This is a brief history, and one told subtly and well, primarily through the lives of individuals. The real heroes of Townsend’s narrative, though, are the authors of the annals – men such as Alonso de Castañeda Chimalpopoca, Domingo Chimalpahin, Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc – who dedicated themselves to preserving their histories as one world crumbled around them and another, still shivering, was born. They would later be remembered mainly through images of hearts torn from living bodies with obsidian blades and corpses tumbling down bloody-stepped pyramids, as a people ruled by ritualised bloodlust, trapped in a rigid fatalism, easily conquered by more agile newcomers from across the sea. “All the days of my life,” he wrote, “I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things.”. "From the initial migration southward, to the second generation after the conquest, Fifth Sun is a masterful account of the history of the Aztecs in their own words." When the Europeans appeared, they thought they were gods and thus allowed them to take land and power. As it turns out natives, pressed into service of the friars, learned our phonetic writing and a few compiled their previous oral histories in native Nahua language. A reader of this book will come away with a new understanding of their remarkable history. Martín Cortés, the son she bore to the conquistador, one of the planet’s first mestizos, appears here as a strong and tragic figure. It is first account of the Mexica's’ (Aztec’s) history that I have read that successfully gives you an inside view. That is not to say that there isn't much good and accurate information here it is just that the author has made up fictional people and put them into the scene of the historical action. And, despite Townsend’s own subtitle, there are no “Aztecs”. In this telling, there is no mystery to the conquest, no hidden germ of superiority bolstering the Spanish victories. Nicholas Jepson, "In China's Wake: How the Commodity … Moctezuma, the story goes, mistook Cortés for a god whose return had long been prophesied, and surrendered his empire without a fight. This book, quite obviously, covers the Conquest of Mexico, yet it is nothing like the standard histories of the event because it is not a history of New Spain or the Spanish empire. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. My images were included on chapter pages, small and not in color. 336 pp, Oxford University Press, 2019. If you are expecting the usual rendering of history and archaeology you will probably be disappointed. Buy Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs Illustrated by Townsend, Camilla (ISBN: 9780190673062) from Amazon's Book Store. They made a lot of war and were good at it. In This Review Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story. A disappointment to me but might please others--not your ordinary history and archaeology. Another body of sources survives, the neglected Nahuatl-language texts known as the annals, written in the years following the conquest by men Townsend describes as “indigenous intellectuals” eager to record their experiences in their own tongue for their own people, to preserve their history before it faded from collective memory. Thank you, Camilla Townsend. The quality of the book is a four as I can see the publisher did want to give a good product, however the product lacks imagery of which I feel could have benefited the reader far more than the binding and dust jacket. This book reads more like romantic historical fiction. Whatever advantages the Spanish had, Townsend argues, came to them only as the heirs of a Eurasian civilisation that, thanks to a few extra millennia of agricultural sedentism, had developed more efficient ways to murder. This is a superb book, I am shocked that I am only the fourth reviewer. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Given that my scholarly expertise, such as it is, is in American religious history, Camilla Townsend’s Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs may seem an odd or unlikely choice of book for me to review here at the blog. The Europeans had not only been welcomed, they had been worshipped.” Most of the enduring myths about the Aztecs perform the same function, flattering the conquerers by expelling the conquered from the realm of the rational. A whole world arises from the pages: vivid, complex, and much closer to us than expected. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, See all details for Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Based on the Aztecs’ own records, it depicts their intricate world and the individuals (like the famous female translator “La Malinche”) who lived there. --Foreword Reviews, Starred Review "Historian Camilla Townsend continues her groundbreaking work in the field in the marvelous Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, a dramatic and accessible narrative that tells the story as the Nahuas saw it." In Fifth Sun, the historian Camilla Townsend points out that even Cortés, a figure hardly known for his modesty, did not mention being welcomed as a god in any of the letters he wrote at the time. 496 pp, Simon & Schuster, 2019. Instead she awakens their voices and allows them speak for themselves through her. Most books about the Aztecs are based on Spanish sources. She emerges here as a complex and sympathetic figure, able – as indigenous Mexicans would be for generations to come – to hold many worlds within herself at once. End notes provide additional detail for those who care, and an extensive bibliography is explained very well in an appendix for those who want to know where all her knowledge comes from. A history book that immerses you in Aztec culture from their own point of view, not a European one, Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2019. Born to a noble lineage of a people unhappily subject to Aztec rule, she was offered as a tribute payment to the Mexica and then sold to the Chontal Maya on the Yucatán coast, one of the first communities to encounter Cortés’s ships. This is an outstanding book. "Historian Camilla Townsend continues her groundbreaking work in the field in the marvelous Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, a dramatic and accessible narrative that tells the story as the Nahuas saw it." Millions of us visit Aztec sites each year, yet the little we know of them has come to us from Spanish texts after conquest. If you are like me, this conventional wisdom often does not ring true. I kinda wanted more of the Spanish narrative of the history of contact and after to just supplement the other sources and flesh out the narrative a little more but I guess that would be a different book. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. Fifth Sun uses Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people of Mexico to ‘shift the viewpoint on Aztec history from the only one accessible up until now—the Spanish—and give an authentic … Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, "Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature" (Northwestern UP, 2020). Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend review – a revolutionary history of the Aztecs. The picture they paint is often at odds with the one painted by the Spanish sources. Fifth Sun A New History of the Aztecs Camilla Townsend. --BookPage, Starred Review "A landmark masterpiece, powerful in its precision and subtle in its weaving of tragedy and glory." Get the latest book reviews delivered bi-weekly. (Erroneously called Aztecs, more on this below). They kept the record intact, and with it preserved a universe. Hernán Cortés – mistaken for a god by Moctezuma. Winner of the Cundill History Prize. As brilliant as it is provocative. 4 December 2020 by particularkev. --Simon Sebag Montefiore, Aspects of History Given away again to the Spaniards, she survived by making herself indispensable, serving as Cortés’s concubine and interpreter as he tortured and slaughtered his way around the continent. The book has a beautiful waxy dust jacket, the book binding is of nice quality, the paper feels decent in quality, and the font is the size I prefer for reading. Despite the subtitle A New History of the Aztecs, however, Fifth Sun does not offer a comprehensive overview of pre-Columbian Aztec history, focusing on dynasties, successions, ceremonies and war. Besides the intellectual thrill the book offers I was deeply moved by it. However much blood Cortés may have spilled, he did not destroy the Aztecs. In Fifth Sun, the historian Camilla Townsend points out that even Cortés, a … Nor, she suggests, is the slaughter of subjugated peoples unique to the Aztecs: “Thus would it always be: the residents of the great cities almost never saw the vulnerable, shattered peoples in distant lands who supported them – except briefly, in an almost unreal sense, as honoured sacrifice victims in magisterial ceremonies.” A similar sentence could be written about the Spanish or indeed the British and Americans, though those empires rarely took the trouble to honour those they killed. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. Part of this is just her writing style, but I also like her Goldilocks flair for simplifying just enough and not too much. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2019. Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2020. My biggest complaint is that I did not receive any of the high quality images shown above in the description. The awe with which Europeans at first beheld the civilisation of the people who would be known as the Aztecs – they called themselves the Mexica – would not last long. (I did take one graduate-level course in Latin American history several years ago, but that’s the extent of my training, and I’ve never taught any courses … Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. I have not read the book yet and will update my review to include that when I am done. By Marie Arana. This is a story of rulers, dynasties, wars the equal of any drama on the BBC. With Fifth Sun, Camilla Townsend has offered a powerful, intelligently written overview of the people of central Mexico. -- The author does not talk about them. In the Nahuatl sources that Townsend draws on, it is Cortés and the Spanish who emerge as the savages, baptising girls as a prelude to raping them, “burning and killing with impunity” in a frenzy of cruelty and greed. Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2020. Foreword Review HISTORY Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs Camilla Townsend Oxford University PRess (Nov 1, 2019) Hardcover $29.95 (320pp) 978-0-19-067306-2 Camilla Townsend’s excellent historical text covers the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs …