Author | Camilla Townsend |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs is a 2019 book by American historian Camilla Townsend. The book utilizes indigenous, as opposed to European, sources to tell the history of Aztec civilization. The book won the 2020 Cundill History Prize.
Townsend was inspired to write the book while working on another work about histories written in Nahuatl. [1] In writing the book, Townsend aimed to convey that Aztec life, though changed, continued after Spanish conquest. [2]
David Stuart, in a review published by The Wall Street Journal , praised the book as a "vivid account of what Aztec writers and chroniclers had to say about their own history". [3] Stuart further praised the book as "bridging of the cultures of Aztec literary history both before and after the coming of the Spanish" rather than operating as a more straightforward history. [3] Christopher Wooley, in a review published by the journal The Latin Americanist , praised the book as "extraordinary" and emphasized its accessibility to a broad audience. [4]
J. H. Elliott reviewed Fifth Sun and the book The Aztecs by Frances F. Berdan in The New York Review of Books . [5] Elliott praised both writers for "style and verve" but also faulted them for not "[being] more generous in their acknowledgment of the pioneering work of predecessors like León-Portilla and Soustell". [5]
The book won the 2020 Cundill History Prize. [6]
Marina or Malintzin, more popularly known as La Malinche, a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 by the natives of Tabasco. Cortés chose her as a consort, and she later gave birth to his first son, Martín – one of the first Mestizos in New Spain.
William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is a India-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, photographer, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued at A$60,000.
Anthony Bruce Summers is an Irish author. He is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and has written ten non-fiction books. He worked for the BBC in current affairs coverage as a producer and then as an assistant editor of the long-running investigative documentary series Panorama. His first book was published in 1976.
Latin American studies (LAS) is an academic and research field associated with the study of Latin America. The interdisciplinary study is a subfield of area studies, and can be composed of numerous disciplines such as economics, sociology, history, international relations, political science, geography, cultural studies, gender studies, and literature.
Quetzalcoatl is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs, he was related to wind, Venus, Sun, merchants, arts, crafts, knowledge, and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. The two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc and Xolotl.
Pekka Johannes Hämäläinen is a Finnish historian who has been the Rhodes Professor of American History at the University of Oxford since 2012. He was formerly in the history department at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Angela Jackson is an American poet, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jackson has been a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a community that fosters the intellectual development of Black creators, since 1970. She has held teaching positions at Kennedy-King College, Columbia College Chicago, Framingham State University, and Howard University. Jackson has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and became the fifth Illinois Poet Laureate in 2020.
Guy Beiner is an Israeli-born historian of the late-modern period with particular expertise in Irish history.
The Cundill History Prize is an annual Canadian book prize for "the best history writing in English". It was established in 2008 by Peter Cundill and is administered by McGill University. The prize encourages "informed public debate through the wider dissemination of history writing to new audiences around the world" and is awarded to an author whose book, published in the past year, demonstrates "historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal". No restrictions are set on the topic of the book or the nationality of the author, and English translations are permitted.
Julia Lovell is a British scholar and prize-winning author and translator focusing on China.
Francis Peter Cundill was a Canadian value investor. He was most noted for his flagship investment fund, Cundill Value Fund. Cundill was a follower of the Benjamin Graham investment style.
Fredrik Logevall is a Swedish-American historian and educator at Harvard University, where he is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of history in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is a specialist in U.S. politics and foreign policy. Logevall was previously the Stephen and Madeline Anbinder Professor of History at Cornell University, where he also served as vice provost and as director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. He won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. His most recent book, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 (2020), won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Maya R. Jasanoff is an American academic who serves as Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, where she focuses on the history of Britain and the British Empire.
Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian. She is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American Studies at New York University, and will join the faculty at Princeton University as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History in July of 2024. She was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Cuba: An American History.
Camilla Townsend is an American historian and professor of history at Rutgers University. She specializes in the early history of Native Americans in the United States, as well as in the history of Latin America. Her 2019 book, Fifth Sun, won the 2020 Cundill History Prize.
Mary Elise Sarotte is a post-Cold War historian. She is the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, which is part of Johns Hopkins University.
Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American writer and fashion designer. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he studied at the Scottish College of Textiles and London's Royal College of Art, before moving at the age of 24 to New York City, where he built a successful career in fashion design, while also beginning to write. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain – which had initially been turned down by many publishers on both sides of the Atlantic – was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize. His second novel, Young Mungo, was published in April 2022.
Shuggie Bain is the debut novel by Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart, published in 2020. It tells the story of the youngest of three children, Shuggie, growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in 1980s post-industrial working-class Glasgow.
Cuba: An American History is a historical book by Ada Ferrer which was published in 2022 by Thorndike Press.