Fifth Sun

Spanning the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, this book recreates key moments in the Mexica past as the Mexica themselves experienced and remembered them. We meet real men and women whose actions changed the course of history. We see time as the Mexica did, a sequence of years extending unbroken from mythic origins to intrepid migration to imperial splendor to the challenges of living with the Spanish colonial presence. Never before has the Aztecs' own epic story been so vividly and engagingly recounted for readers of English. -- Louise M. Burkhart, author of Aztecs on Stage: Religious Theater in Colonial Mexico 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. A whole world arises from the pages: vivid, complex, and much closer to us than expected. Townsend's understanding of the indigenous annals is unmatched, and her book reads like a novel. You simply cannot put it down. -- Caterina Pizzigoni, author of The Life Within: Local Indigenous Society in Mexico's Toluca Valley, 1650-1800 Never before has the political history of the Aztecs, who knew themselves as the Mexica, been told with such sweeping elan. Townsend brings keen insight into the motivations of the players, be they seasoned warriors, shackled slaves, or calculating concubines. Her gripping narrative, underscoring Aztec tenacity and endurance before and beyond the Spanish conquest, is sure to captivate readers. -- Barbara Mundy, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City Camilla Townsend has an unusually profound understanding of Nahua culture, before and during the colonial period. She also has a rare set of research, linguistic, and writing skills. That combination of expertise and talent make her uniquely positioned to offer us a new book on the Aztecs, one that manages to be-despite the plethora of existing studies-both original and mandatory reading. This is a page-turner that is nonetheless packed with new insights and interpretations. -- Matthew Restall, author of When Montezuma Met Cortes: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History A compelling drama... After centuries of the end of the Aztec empire being related through a Spanish lens, Fifth Sun and its use of Mexica firsthand accounts and perspectives is a needed corrective. It helps fill in a story that's been one-sided for far too long. --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. --BookPage, Starred Review A landmark masterpiece, powerful in its precision and subtle in its weaving of tragedy and glory. --Foreign Affairs Ms. Townsend has combed the extraordinary accounts of the early colonial era written by indigenous historians to paint a far more complex picture of persistence by the Aztecs and their descendants. It is a vivid account of what Aztec writers and chroniclers had to say about their own history and of a world decimated through constant change and loss... Fifth Sun provides essential reading on the complex cultural fabric of Mexico, helping to rescue a deep and layered history that might otherwise have fallen into oblivion. --Wall Street Journal