In an ambitious new translation of Diego de Landa's Account of the Things of Yucatan (Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan), the editor revises and updates the language for the contemporary reader of English. In the process he captures the narrative power and intensity, the nuances and subtleties of meaning and the emotions of Landa's history of Yucatan at the time of Spanish arrival, conquest, and settlement of the peninsula. Landa's observations speak of his intellectual curiosity about and of his respect for the First Peoples of Yucatan. For instance, he credits the vast architectural legacy,...