Description:
"He was the wind, he was the guide, the roadsweeper of the rain gods, of the masters of water, of those who brought rain." So wrote the Spanish priest Bernardo de Sahagún of the pale-skinned Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who, Mexican mythology had it, left his homeland but promised his people that he would one day return to them from the eastern sea. Neil Baldwin, the author of biographies of Thomas Edison and Man Ray, offers an intriguing life of the god--a biography, that is, of Quetzalcoatl as viewed by the Mexican people before and after the European conquest. In doing so, he captures the feel of the Mexican places in which Quetzalcoatl held sway: the temples and pyramids of Teotihuacán, the great fortresses of Mitla and Monte Albán, the ball courts of Chichén Itzá. He also provides a convincing portrait of Aztec and other ancient Mesoamerican lifeways, inviting his readers to share the "fear and terror" those people felt when they entered the god's sacred precincts. Baldwin's sympathetic readings of indigenous texts, coupled with his easy style, make Legends of the Plumed Serpent a fine introduction to ancient Mexico; his account of the god's fortunes after the arrival of the Europeans will also be of interest to students of comparative mythology and religion. --Gregory McNamee
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