Before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, the Aztecs eradicated many Mayan works and sought to depict themselves as the true rulers through a fake history and newly written texts. It’s still a great primer if you want to go deeper into understanding the Maya, and it’s worth looking at for the collection of images alone, but… it’s not the most entertaining book I’ve ever brought home from the library.

This particular Saturday found Vesper in her favourite place, joyfully surging through midfield with a ball at her feet. The Dresden Codex ( Codex Dresdensis) is held in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek (SLUB), the state library in Dresden, Germany. Although its authenticity was initially disputed, various tests conducted in the early 21st century supported its authenticity and Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History judged it to be an authentic Pre-Columbian codex in 2018. Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas lamented when he found out that such books were destroyed: "These books were seen by our clergy, and even I saw part of those that were burned by the monks, apparently because they thought [they] might harm the Indians in matters concerning religion, since at that time they were at the beginning of their conversion. There was something dry about this — and though you might be inclined to put that down to this being non-fiction, I read a very similar book on the Incas just a little later and found it riveting.

A triumph of scholarship, it can be read with profit by specialists and students, as well as by visitors to the realm of the Maya.

The codex first appeared in 1832 as an acquisition of France's Bibliothèque Impériale (later the Bibliothèque Nationale, or National Library) in Paris.

The book includes a short essay on “Mindful Reading” and a meditation on sound from editor John Brehm—helping readers approach the poems from an experiential, non-analytical perspective and enter into the mindful reading of poetry as a kind of meditation. The sixth edition presents new archaeological evidence and historical studies and offers the most extensive revisions of this classic work to date.