Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

Camilla Townsend

4.15 · Rating details · 399 ratings · 67 reviews

In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story—and the story of what happened afterwards—has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native American ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published November 1st 2019 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published October 4th 2019)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Fifth Sun, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Fifth Sun

Lists with This Book

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

History Published in Year: 2019

371 books — 96 voters

Valkyrie by Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir

Cundill History Prize 2020 Longlist

16 books — 3 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.15 ·

Rating details

· 399 ratings · 67 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

Nov 18, 2019 Meganators added it

Shelves: history

Well I've only just started reading this, but this page 2 quote:

"Libraries are generally thought to be very quiet places, whether they shelter stacks of rare, leather-bound books or rows of computers. Another way to think of a library, however, is as a world of frozen voices, captured and rendered accessible forever by one of the most powerful human developments of all time--the act of writing. From that perspective, a library suddenly becomes a very noisy place. In theory, it contains fragments ...more

flag 33 likes · Like · see review

Dec 07, 2020 nastyako rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to nastyako by: anne applebaum on twitter

Shelves: nonfiction

This is my first encounter with "Aztec" - they never called themselves Aztecs - culture and history, not counting Apocalypto. This book uses new sources by indigenous peoples and tells a lot of memorable stories and recently won Cundill History Prize.
If you were disappointed by Black sun like I was, I highly recommend this non-fiction book! ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

May 31, 2020 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, mesoamerica, nahuatl

A very good book (with a couple of hiccups) that illuminates the culture of the Mexica and the Triple Alliance they forged with Tlacopan and Tetzcohco, using lesser known Nahuatl manuscripts to bust multiple myths.

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Aug 12, 2020 chcubic rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

The book claims to be a revisionist history of Aztecs, to revolutionize almost everything we thought we knew about the civilization. In some sense these big claims are justified, because the author takes her information not just from the traditional Spanish side, but also from many "local" transcripts written in Nahuatl. The author should also get her credit for trying to introduce more personal voices into the history.

However, for my personal taste I feel she overdoes it. There are just too man The book claims to be a revisionist history of Aztecs, to revolutionize almost everything we thought we knew about the civilization. In some sense these big claims are justified, because the author takes her information not just from the traditional Spanish side, but also from many "local" transcripts written in Nahuatl. The author should also get her credit for trying to introduce more personal voices into the history.

However, for my personal taste I feel she overdoes it. There are just too many trifles without clear purpose, narrative, or consequence. Granted, it would still be a certain form of "history" if we collected all diaries and newspapers then throw them together to make an exhibition. But without an intended storyline it is very unorganized and dull.

What makes things worse, when the author rarely leaves those personal accounts and tries to explain something like most normal history books do, the explanation can be very simplistic and banal. For why Aztecs were defeated by Spaniards, for instance, the author concludes it's because:

(page 98) ... in the Old World, people had been full time farmers for ten thousand years. Europeans had by no means been the first farmers, but they were nevertheless the cultural heirs of many millennia of sedentary living... In the New World, people had been full-time farmers for perhaps three thousand years. It was almost as if Renaissance Europe had come face to face with the ancient Sumerians."

This is actually not the first time such naïve "superiority of agricultural society" idea appears in the book:

(page 18) ...the Europeans, later famous for their fighting, were not the ones to create the first explosives; the supposedly peaceful and self-contained Chinese did that. The point is that farming peoples[sic] always developed mightier civilizations in the sense of being able to defeat people who had not developed comparable weapons and goods, and whose populations had not grown equivalently.

So, farming people always defeat other people (and actually Peaceful and self-contained Chinese is also a quite wrong stereotype). I can appreciate the authors good intention to bring more attention to the voice of the local people, unfortunately she does it in a way with many hackneyed and incorrect/inaccurate ideas. That's not what I expect from a decent history book. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Aug 22, 2019 Ashlee Bree rated it liked it

Shelves: history, nonfiction

Forget everything you thought you knew about the Aztecs. Or the Mexica, as they were more commonly known amongst themselves. A fresh and insightful, sometimes familiar, history splashes across these pages which will open your eyes, ears, and heart to Nahua culture pre-and-post colonization. It resounds in a way that makes you realize how - for far too long - we’ve been missing more than half of the story, and it’s one we all need to hear. To learn. To know.

Townsend winds a vibrantly complex and ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2020 Carlos rated it really liked it

A good book if you want to know a little bit more about the Aztecs. The language is a little complex and it does take some previous knowledge to fully enjoy the premise of this book but with some effort, I was able to enjoy it. It is mostly a book that talked about the structure of the Aztec empire and how it started and how it developed to be what it was at the beginning of the Spanish conquest. The book does detail how what made the empire strong also made it weak and vulnerable to their enemi ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 06, 2020 Marc Gerstein rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-study

This book covers a lot of ground, a heck of a lot, as would be expected of a historical survey. But readers having a least some familiarity going in can help cope with voluminous information — names, groupings, places, etc. I’d benefit from that in many historical topics, but not here. My prior knowledge of the Aztecs was limited so more than usual was new to me, meaning it was a challenge to keep all the new information straight. I’ll probably need to come back and re-read this.

At least I do ha This book covers a lot of ground, a heck of a lot, as would be expected of a historical survey. But readers having a least some familiarity going in can help cope with voluminous information — names, groupings, places, etc. I’d benefit from that in many historical topics, but not here. My prior knowledge of the Aztecs was limited so more than usual was new to me, meaning it was a challenge to keep all the new information straight. I’ll probably need to come back and re-read this.

At least I do have a motive to do a re-read. The topic, the story of the Aztecs, or rather the Mexica people (which is where Mexico gets its name), is a fascinating one. It’s hard for writers to give a non-judgmental treatment of this topic, since there are people here who demand to be judged, whether the Mexica for brutal subjugation of others around them and, of course, human sacrifice, and, of course, the Cortes and Conquistadors who, essentially wiped out a civilization through the combination plain-old violence and the diseases they brought from home, where they (the more civilized peoples, were used to living with their farm animals and, hence, had developed more immunities).

On the whole, though, I think Townsend does a pretty good job. One Goodreads reviewer who gave a one-star review took Townsend to task for having written “in the Old World, people had been full time farmers for ten thousand years. Europeans had by no means been the first farmers, but they were nevertheless the cultural heirs of many millennia of sedentary living... In the New World, people had been full-time farmers for perhaps three thousand years. It was almost as if Renaissance Europe had come face to face with the ancient Sumerians.”

But it’s a reasonable point, not meant to gratuitously insult pre-agricultural societies. Many writers have explained the implications of the agricultural revolution, that allowed populations to stay in place, work less strenuously to be better nourished, specialize and free up many for other task such as those that led to more complex societal institutions and better technology. Townsend is not by any means unique in this notion, and it goes a long way to explain why Western Hemisphere indigenous populations fell to those from across the sea. My impression here is that indigenous societies had a lot, a heck of a lot and more than many acknowledge, with those of Europe except for pacing. My sense from this is that the Europeans were like one who would take am 8 AM Metroliner express from NYC to Washington DC with the indigenous societies of the western Hemisphere get on a 1 PM slow stop-everywhere local from NYC to Washington. They’re both traveling along the same path and given enough time, will get to the same destination. But one party started a lot earlier and moved a lot faster. No wonder the Europeans (analogous to those who got to DC early, had plenty of time to get checked into a hotel, unpacked, have a leisurely lunch and enjoy some sites were in a better place when they eventually met up than the Mexica, who just arrived harried after a long slow trip. In an arm wrestling competition at Union station, I’d be my money on the Europeans.

The reason for the late start of the Western Hemisphere folks is obvious. The Eastern Hemisphere was well in motion by the time anyone found the Bairing land bridge to the West and took the time to migrate a long way down. As to the speed of development, Townsend doesn’t go there, but I am reminded that it may be time to re-read Jarred Diamond (“Guns, Germs and Steel”) — so Townsend did leave some things untreated. That’s OK. Waht she did was plenty. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 24, 2020 Erica Tofu rated it it was amazing

There is so much information in this book. It tickles me how the author uses themselves as a source. There is no pretending to have an understanding of a people who were so complex. Individuals who made history are given a voice like I have yet to read in other textbooks. I look forward to a reread.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 05, 2020 William rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

My rating is on the low side because I really trudged through this book. As a few readers mentioned, having some familiarity with the history of the region the Aztecs inhabited helps a lot. I had virtually none. I appreciate that there is a lineage chart at the beginning of the book, but there were so many characters and so many interrelated families that I could not keep them sorted out.

Townsend states that she was trying to balance a scholarly perspective with the needs of non-scholarly reader My rating is on the low side because I really trudged through this book. As a few readers mentioned, having some familiarity with the history of the region the Aztecs inhabited helps a lot. I had virtually none. I appreciate that there is a lineage chart at the beginning of the book, but there were so many characters and so many interrelated families that I could not keep them sorted out.

Townsend states that she was trying to balance a scholarly perspective with the needs of non-scholarly readers. The problem with this compromise is that it perhaps does not satisfy either group. There are a lot of footnotes at the end, and they are generally filled with information, but I did not have the patience to keep turning to the back of the book to find out what was in each note.

I was surprised that I ended up being a bit repelled by Aztec culture. Gender roles were rigid; men all had to be warriors (and something else in the rare times when a war was not on), and women had so many tasks that mothers told their daughters not to expect to get much sleep as an adult. Human sacrifice grew in volume as time passed. Rich men (and only rich men) could have several wives.

Of course I accept Townsend's point that the Mexica shared the normal range of human emotions. (Did anyone ever believe otherwise?). The City of Tenochitlan is an impressive achievement, and the market place was unexpectedly remarkable to me. Many of the rulers, though not all, tried to treat their people well.

Townsend points out several times that the Mexica had been non-nomadic for only 3000 years, compared to 10000 for Western Europe. This did lead to a technology gap. It makes sense, then, that Mexica polity would be reminiscent of Europe a few hundred years ago, in the Middle Ages. War was incessant, rivalries between rulers and towns were endless, and much of diplomacy was organized around arranged marriages which were akin to mergers.

The book seems to me to be less effective in discussing the colonial period. The Spanish were erratic in governing and in social policies, but in general seem to have exhibited the usual painful downsides of colonial governments. I ended up with even less of a sense of the Spanish population than I retained of the indigenous peoples.

Sadly, though, after reading this book, my take-ways are the things I just wrote. None of the characters stick with me. And one of my ways of rating a book is how much I enjoyed reading it. I do respect this book, but reading it too often was like doing school-assigned homework.

I also can't help but mention that (and this is a first for me), I feel the book is badly designed. There are too many words on a page, and as I mentioned above, the footnotes are at the end. The cover blurbs are in white type on an orange background, and I found them utterly unreadable. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Nov 14, 2019 Gitai Ben-ammi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

Most histories of the Aztecs have been based on European sources because historians were too lazy to learn Nahuatl. This one is based on Nahuatl histories written by indigenous historians. I cannot recommend it highly enough. So many misconceptions, so many self serving narratives from colonizers, so many falsehoods are rectified. It was the first history of the Aztecs that made me think brightly of my ancestral connections to them and made me understand the continuing power of the Aztec imagery ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 10, 2020 Jason Honeycutt rated it it was ok

Plods along mired in the extravagance of minutia, and a multitude of clear biases. That said, there are some moments that are of genuine interest (historical and otherwise) and a few well written lines

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 21, 2020 Jacques Coulardeau rated it really liked it

MANY DETAILS HAVE BEEN SOFTENED

The Aztecs are a mystery in Mesoamerica, in fact in Mexico. Their own name is the Mexica and they are only one people in Mexico which was occupied before the Spaniards arrived sometime after Christopher Columbus by a mosaic of various Indian ethnic groups that are specified as for their ethnic names but that are not specified as for their origins and languages. They are just there, then, coming from no one really knows where without a real specified past. The only MANY DETAILS HAVE BEEN SOFTENED

The Aztecs are a mystery in Mesoamerica, in fact in Mexico. Their own name is the Mexica and they are only one people in Mexico which was occupied before the Spaniards arrived sometime after Christopher Columbus by a mosaic of various Indian ethnic groups that are specified as for their ethnic names but that are not specified as for their origins and languages. They are just there, then, coming from no one really knows where without a real specified past. The only language that is mentioned is the Mexica or Aztec language which is Nahuatl.

The only specification about where the Mexica, not the other tribes, came from is summarized at the end as follows: “north, … the land of the remote ancestors, the forbears of Shield Flower and Itzcoatl, who came from the American Southwest.” (page 208) There is a vague allusion to the Mayas who are in the south, in Yucatan, with no more detail, and no connections whatsoever with the Mexica or Aztecs. The Maya are actually only mentioned because of La Malinche who was from the “empire” the Mexica were building in the fifteenth century by making their ethnic neighbors dependent, making them pay a tribute in exchange for peace and more or less self-government. The Maya were beyond this “empire” and La Malinche was sold into slavery by her own parents to slave dealers in the vast area controlled by the Mexica and she ended up sold as a slave in some Maya city. She was liberated by the Spaniards of Hernando Cortes and she became the stable and lasting main concubine of this Conquistador because she was fluent in Nahuatl and Maya languages. She could speak them and read them. And she had had the chance of learning Spanish from the Spaniards themselves and she became the translator and interpreter of Hernando Cortes. She thus took part, an extremely active part of all the negotiations Cortes had with the various people in Mesoamerica, and first of all the Mexica.

We get the impression that Mesoamerica and the central plains of what is today Mexico were inhabited and had been for a while, though there is absolutely no precision about the original inhabitants of this region, knowing that Indians are asserted to have been in Northern American since at least 20,000 or even 25,000 years ago, and at least as much if not actually more in South America and Mesoamerica (Chile, Cape Verde, second archaeological layer 20,000 BCE, and there is a third layer not yet reached dated as being 30,000 years old at least). This is a common shortcoming when dealing with Indian civilizations in the Americas. We speak in archaeological terms: a civilization is considered only when they left something behind, and we seem not to understand that it may have taken several thousand years to produce this first artifact on a durable lasting medium. We thus seem to date a civilization as being born when they left behind something that has survived them. The Mexica conquered a “territory” for themselves in Mesoamerica, but conquered it from whom? Who had they been before and who were the people they conquered this territory from?

This is rather embarrassing for me because the Mexica settled in Mesoamerica and built a rural-cum-urban (to use an India from India concept) civilization based on agriculture. The main crop is maize, but cacao and tobacco are kept marginal in the book, and we assume they had all the standard Mexican vegetables like beans, tomatoes, chili peppers, all sorts of squash, cotton, and a few more. The origin of these domesticated plants is mostly Amazonian and for some Mesoamerican, particularly Olmec and Maya agriculture (particularly for maize). But cacao has been archaeologically asserted in Bolivian Amazonia around 3500 BCE. We are thus thrown into the history of the Mexica – alias Aztec – under a historical and geographical big dome that more or less excludes the outside world and the past before these ethnically identified people. The only intrusion considered here is that of the Spaniards, and I must say the intrusive colonialism of these Spaniards is demonstrated and illustrated in full detail. And that’s why the book is interesting. If and when we stray away from this dome that makes me think of Stephen King’s Under the Dome novel, it is to follow Hernando Cortes and his adventures, and going away from his Mexica territory is rare and limited in scope and objectives.

But the book has two shortcomings that are just frustrating. There are no illustrations, and apart from one map, no images of the Mexica – alias Aztec – architecture, of their arts (paintings, carvings, codices, etc.). Nahuatl is often referred to as being written before the introduction of the Spanish phonetic alphabet, but no illustration or explanation about this writing system is provided. We may induce that the codices were lost, more or less all of them, due to the humid and hot climate, and probably because some might have been burned or destroyed by the Spaniards. But here again, apart from an allusion to accordion-style or screen-style folding codices, we get no pictures and no detail, apart from references. It would be interesting to compare the various codices produced in this Mesoamerican central plains by the Mexica, or other ethnic groups or communities, and then enter a comparison with Maya codices, in order to measure the level of writing development reached by the Mexica before the arrival of the Spaniards who are going to deculturate this vast area completely as for writing and even as for their languages. Spanish was eventually imposed. Old writing systems were banned. Christianity was imposed, at times brutally. In fact, brutality being the first and foremost colonial method used by the Spaniards, Christianity was always imposed within a context of extreme violence, and I regret a lot the pandemics are not studied seriously in this book.

Once again, as for these epidemics, an allusion, or a mention of one or several is all we get, but no real evaluation of the human damage. The final set of mentions in the last chapter is as follows: hemorrhagic smallpox (1576-1577, page 183), measles (1595, page 190), typhus (1606, page 193), whooping cough (1624, page 202), and I do not pretend to be exhaustive. In the same chapter the author speaks of Black African slaves arriving in droves in the Mexican Central Plains, and particularly in Mexico City and other cities with two main functions: being liveried servants in urban households and being plantation slaves in the countryside. But the fact that Hernando Cortes had a sugar plantation with black slaves is not mentioned, and the fact that Cortes had tried to mechanize some operations of the processing of this sugar cane, using the power of water in rivers, is not mentioned either. But the author cannot explain the shift from Indians to black slaves. She does say the Indian population is decreasing at an extremely fast rate and the black population is increasing very fast too. She gives one set of figures about the city of Mexico: circa 1610, there were 36,000 Spaniards, 12,000 Blacks, and 20-25,000 Indians. Note the imprecise Indian population. Why bring in so many Blacks? Because, as some say, Indians cannot work in slavery? This is absurd since there were slaves in Indians societies before the arrival of the Spaniards. But the book is totally fuzzy about this Indian slavery as for numbers, functions, living conditions, and only one function is more or less hinted at: they will be sacrificed sooner or later. That’s their final destination. But no precision about what they did in the meantime, and where they lived.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 12, 2020 Jw513 rated it really liked it

This was a fascinating look at indigeneous culture and society in Central Mexico, and its remarkable relative resilience in the face of Spanish conquest.

The people we know as Aztecs -- who called themselves the Mexica -- had arrived relatively recently in Central Mexico themselves, perhaps from Utah. They effectively played regional politics, which Townsend describes as being cemented by polygamous marital alliances among the nobility of the various city-states. (The commoners practiced monogamy This was a fascinating look at indigeneous culture and society in Central Mexico, and its remarkable relative resilience in the face of Spanish conquest.

The people we know as Aztecs -- who called themselves the Mexica -- had arrived relatively recently in Central Mexico themselves, perhaps from Utah. They effectively played regional politics, which Townsend describes as being cemented by polygamous marital alliances among the nobility of the various city-states. (The commoners practiced monogamy.) The political fortunes of a city could be reflected in the status of a wife, with the highest-status wife generally being the mother whose son was expected to inherit the ruling title of 'tlatoani.' Conspiracies among the sons of lower-status wives against their higher-status cousins seemed to be constant sources of instability. But this instability provided critical opportunities for savvy actors to climb the ladder of regional power.

The Mexica had played this game well and were the leading power of Central Mexico by the time of Spanish contact. This bred resentment, as did their poor treatment of other tributary cities. But ultimately Townsend portrays the assistance that Cortes and other conquistadors received from the other tribes as being more a matter of pragmatism than anything else. The Spaniards seemed to have superior technology (steel, horses, sails), and the other tribes felt no particular kinship towards their Mexica overlords. So it simply made sense as a practical matter for them to assist with the Spanish, just as it made sense practically for Malintzin (commonly known as Malinche) to assist the foreigners from across the sea (with translation and diplomacy) as well. Townsend is good at portraying people's individual, rather than collective, interests and making sense of them to the reader.

Overall, this was a quick, fascinating, and well-done history book, full of surprising facts. For example, I had no idea before reading this book that more than 1 million people in Mexico still speak Nahuatl, the indigenous language. Emiliano Zapata, the famous early 20th century revolutionary, was also a Nahuatl-speaker. I also had never heard of chinampas, the clever floating gardens used by residents of Tenochtitlan (the home of the Mexica, now the site of Mexico City) to take advantage of the city's location on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco.
...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2021 Abby added it

Another one of those books that I intended to read little bits of and ended up inhaling the whole thing. And now have a long list of other titles, should I ever want to go down the Aztec rabbit hole.

Of course, there were no Aztecs. That is the first thing I learned, and smacked my forehead because I should have known--the ethnic group that rose to power in the Valley of Mexico called themselves the Mexica. People of the wider region who shared a language, Nahuatl, called themselves Nahuas. Peopl ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 08, 2020 Alec added it · review of another edition

An illuminating reexamination

I don’t do star ratings on Goodreads, and if I finish a book I give it five stars on Amazon.

A very enjoyable new (old) piece of history, and a powerful addition to the project of re-centering indigenous people in their own past and future. The Mexica and their neighbors and the complex dynamics among them really don’t fit into enlightenment conceptions of power, and so much of their shade and color and meaning has been left unexplored by Western historians. This bo ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 13, 2020 Tomy rated it really liked it

Really love how they went back to sources written by the Mexica and used that as the basis of history. As all nations, the Aztecs was a complex culture that was not monolith. Loved the part where the Europeans interacted with the Aztec empire and how accidental their victory seemed (other than smallpox)

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 19, 2020 Mark Lawry rated it it was amazing

From page 2 of the introduction:

"Libraries are generally thought to be very quiet places, whether they shelter stacks of rare, leather-bound books or rows of computers. Another way to think of a library, however, is as a world of frozen voices, captured and rendered accessible forever by one of the most powerful human developments of all time-the act of writing. From that perspective, a library suddenly becomes a very noisy place."

By the end of this page I had come to believe Townsend would be ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 31, 2020 Ann rated it really liked it

it's interesting (and good) to hear a people's story from their words and not those of conquerors. I particularly liked the format, which was to make each chapter a story of one person, from ancient history (legend/tale of Shield Flower) to after the conquest. In the audio book, the narrator would spell each name after it was first introduced, which was a nice acknowledgement that most readers would have no idea how to go from written to spoken and vice versa. I'm glad I listened to this book so ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 06, 2021 John Parle rated it liked it

This book succeeds in conveying a sense of the complex politics, deep tradition, and sophisticated society of pre-conquest Mexico, and in underlining that these were not simply erased with the arrival of the Spaniards. Indigenous accounts are brought to the fore, and the experiences of women are also given special attention.
The author is also at pains to get across that at the end of the day the Aztecs were people, rather than the exotic aliens of our imagination. She does this by visiting the This book succeeds in conveying a sense of the complex politics, deep tradition, and sophisticated society of pre-conquest Mexico, and in underlining that these were not simply erased with the arrival of the Spaniards. Indigenous accounts are brought to the fore, and the experiences of women are also given special attention.
The author is also at pains to get across that at the end of the day the Aztecs were people, rather than the exotic aliens of our imagination. She does this by visiting the stories of various interesting characters, some well known and some less so, including Moctezuma and his daughter Isabel, Malintzin and her son Martín, the indigenous scholar Chimalpahin, and a whole cast of different tlatoanis, courtiers, princes and princesses. Each chapter takes one such personality as a framing device. These stories add colour and insight into the times, though for me they did not always seem to fit into a clear narrative with the rest of the material in the chapter.
The author aims for a balance between an academic and a popular history book, moving most of the explanation of sources to an appendix and a notes section, which is extensive (about a third of the total page count). In the main text there's a clear effort made to explain things as clearly as possible without losing important detail, though in places I found the subject matter a bit dry (in particular the complicated genealogies). Not much attention is given to the conquistadors, with the exception of Cortés, though arguably that is not really the point of the book. The conquest itself is addressed in the middle chapters, but is not the author's main focus. It is presented basically as the inevitable result of the "guns, germs and steel", which historical circumstance had given the Europeans, coming into explosive contact with the delicate balance of power relations over which Moctezuma presided. The natives did not think the conquistadors were gods, nor were they too bewildered by their horses or their weapons for very long, and resisted their subjugation about as stiffly as they possibly could.
I found Fifth Sun a little disjointed and dry in spots but overall an informative and interesting read. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 06, 2021 Nayajja rated it it was amazing

Fifth Sun tells the history of the Aztecs from their point of view, not from the point of view of the Spanish who conquered them. Pre-contact, the Aztecs had a system of recording the years, with glyphs that would act as mnemonic devices for the storytellers. When the Spanish came priests took some promising, young Aztecs and taught them Spanish, and to write. Many of these young Mexicas--on the side--wrote histories of their people in their native language Nahuatl with Spanish characters, recor ...more

flag Like · see review

Dec 16, 2020 Canaan rated it really liked it

A well-written, accessible, and engaging history of the people we know as the Aztecs. Rather than using the conquest of 1519 as a narrative beginning or endpoint, Townsend frames it as a pivot in the Aztecs' history, showing what came before and after, and the many ways the Aztecs handled the upheaval. In this, Townsend gives careful attention to various individuals in each chapter, such as Malintzin (Malinche), reconstructing their experiences from the extant sources. This effort to imagine wha A well-written, accessible, and engaging history of the people we know as the Aztecs. Rather than using the conquest of 1519 as a narrative beginning or endpoint, Townsend frames it as a pivot in the Aztecs' history, showing what came before and after, and the many ways the Aztecs handled the upheaval. In this, Townsend gives careful attention to various individuals in each chapter, such as Malintzin (Malinche), reconstructing their experiences from the extant sources. This effort to imagine what it was like for individuals, while acknowledging the limitations on such a task, enriches the narrative. In addition to being a great history of the Aztecs, the book is also an effective work of meta-history, i.e. reflecting on how we know what we know about the Aztecs and giving perspective on previous historical works, many of which are from self-aggrandizing or blinkered European authors. In contesting various Spanish accounts, Townsend punctures several misconceptions about the Aztecs, such as their rampant or insatiable use of human sacrifice. Overall, Townsend humanizes the Aztecs. If sometimes historical subjects (like the U.S. Founding Fathers) are complacently regarded as familiar or totally intelligible and need to be rendered strange or problematized for further profitable study, sometimes historical subjects (like the Aztecs) are regarded as too bizarre or “exotic” or incommensurate to our understandings, and in such cases it is important to emphasize that they are not fundamentally unlike us. Townsend does this effectively. There is an annotated bibliography that gives a great overview of the primary sources Townsend uses, the so-called Aztec annals.

I loved this Nahua poem, which Townsend speculates may have been sung at one of the courtyard performances in Tenochtitlan:

My heart is angry
We are not born twice, not engendered twice. Instead we leave this earth forever.
We are in the presence of this company but a moment! It can never be -- I will never be happy, never be content.
Where does my heart live? Where is my home? Where does my house lie? I suffer on this earth. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 04, 2021 Dee rated it it was amazing

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. Camilla Townsend.
Before the Spaniards came to present-day Mexico in the 1500’s before the slaughter of the indigenous, and the subjugation of those who remained, there was a grand world-class city created by a group of migrants from the north called the Mexica. In a central lake surrounded by swampy land they built Tenochtitlan, known today as Mexico City. They inter-married with the faring people in the area and created a culture that today we refer to as ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 19, 2020 Barlaensdoonn rated it really liked it

Shelves: indigenous-peoples-mexico

This is a fantastic and lucid telling of the political complexities and diplomatic relationships and practices of the greater México city basin from 100 years before the conquest through several generations after. She consults actual sources of the native peoples which have been ignored, belittled, or overlooked by scholars for hundreds of years, and she weaves a tale that reads like fiction.

The only reason I give it 4 stars is because I feel that in times of historical murkiness, where perhaps ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 23, 2020 K rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, nonfiction

A meticulous, compelling history of the Nahua peoples (Aztec, Townsend explains, is a misnomer), told through primary texts in Nahuatl and the people themselves wherever possible.

Townsend is sure to dispel myths and stereotypes. To take a common example, they did not view Hernan Cortés himself as a god, for example. Neither their archival sources nor Cortés' own letters tell anything of the sort. Sacrifices were not done out of mindless bloodlust but often as a political tool to destroy neighbo ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 06, 2020 litost rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed the intro and first chapter in which Townsend gives a brief but sweeping history from the beginning of agriculture onwards. I was pleased to see in print Townsend’s belief that the Mexica (Aztec) immigrated from as far away as Utah, something I’ve always thought (a partial answer to the question: where did the Anasazi go?).

From chapter 2 on, Townsend draws largely from Nahua texts, a welcome change from the European view of events, and adds needed context to why the conquest hap ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 29, 2020 Gabriel rated it really liked it

A refreshing look at the Aztecs/Mexica and the arc of their empire. Dr. Townsend goes through the arduous process of researching this book by combing through Nahua texts, providing a different look into the lives of the Mexica from what is typically provided by the Spanish.

Only about a quarter of this book was dedicated to the actual arrival of the Spanish, with half of this book written about pre-conquest times. Providing a great outline of the purest forms of Mexica culture.

There were some rea ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 07, 2020 Liam rated it really liked it

"Startlingly -- at least to newcomers -- the market also served as a repository for the urine collected in clay pots in households across the city. Whether people were paid for what they brought or fined for what they didn't bring is not clear. In either case, the practice served two purposes. The collection of waste in one place rendered most of the city very clean. Ammonia was also needed for tanning hides and making salt crystals, and there was no better source than urine form the islands ten ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 04, 2020 Daniel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

The Aztec story told from their perspective. Its rather enlightening yet it still doesn't shy away from the negatives of the culture, it just puts it into context. If you are at all interested in the history of North America or the Age of Exploration and you probably do if you found this review than you should take a look. It covers the entire history of the civilization from its nomadic roots through the Spanish conquest and after to the assimilation process. Its always a good thing to try to b ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 29, 2020 Ben Leeming rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mesoamerica, favorites

This is an important new contribution to the history of indigenous Mesoamerica. The author bases much of her writing on primary sources written in Nahuatl, the language of the indigenous people of Central Mexico at the time of Contact. It is a book, therefore, that pushes the field in the direction of allowing indigenous people to tell their own version of events. To top it all off, the book is written in such an engaging manner that people of all backgrounds and interests will surely be pulled ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 30, 2020 Liz rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-own, north-america, non-fiction-history, set-in-mexico

Just finished this enlightening history of the Mexica (did you know that the Aztecs never called themselves Aztecs?)

All based on texts written by the indigenous people in the 1500-1600s, we get to hear what the Mexica and other Nahua groups have to say about their own history. (After the conquest, people quickly adapted the Roman alphabet to their own language Nahuatl. The idea of writing their own history wasn't new - they already had books filled with standardized pictographic symbols!) ...more

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

History

136 users

Nonfiction

63 users

Historical

6 users

History > World History

5 users

Politics

5 users

Religion

4 users

The Americas

3 users

North American Hi... > American History

3 users

Literature > 16th Century

3 users

Audiobook

2 users

See top shelves…

About Camilla Townsend

Camilla Townsend

27 followers

Camilla Townsend (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is professor of history at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). Her special interest is in the relations between indigenous peoples and Europeans throughout the Americas.