Category: Books (Page 6 of 11)

The Maya is a general information book about, of course, the Maya, written by mayanist Michael D. Coe. The book was originally published in 1966, and is now in its seventh edition. Alas, my library is not that modern, so the most current copy I could find was the fifth edition, from 1993. That means that from the start my knowledge of the Maya is 16 years out of date. Oh well.
I suspect this book is used as a textbook in classes that cover the Maya, but I found it a surprisingly easy and quick read (I finished the book in about a day). I liked the very opinionated writing style of the author – so rare now on serious scientists -, but I was frustrated about, all in all, how little information the book conferred. I come to the subject knowing almost nothing about the Maya, but with a degree in Ancient and Near Eastern History and Archaeology – which in reality meant Egyptian archaeology: I know next to nothing about other Near Eastern cultures, though once upon a time I could read Sumerian cuneiform legal texts with some ease. But while I’ve forgotten a lot about the ancient Egyptians, the book gave me the impression that I probably know more about them that Professor Coe, and probably all mayanists, know about their subject. It is understandable, Maya hieroglyphs have been decoded only in the last few decades and the texts that have survived are not only limited but they deal with limited subjects. On the other hand, trough their three thousand year history, the ancient Egyptians wrote about pretty much everything under the sun – I’m sure there are some ostraca grocery lists in some museum somewhere. But my point is that reading a book that conveys so little knowledge is quite frustrating.
I am sure that there are areas in which “our” knowledge of the Maya is quite extensive – their religion, for example. Unfortunately the book concentrated most in the possible/probable (but not certain) history of the Maya, and gave relatively little information about their culture. Perhaps the newer editions are better. I have a book on the daily life of the Maya that I’m going to read next (it’s probably just as old, if not older), perhaps it will give me a better picture of what their society was like.
And if not, there is always

I am going to the Yucatan (I will blog more about this later), so I’ve checked out Hidden Cancun & the Yucatan from the library. This 2003 edition is the most recent guidebook to the region that the library has. And, I’m sorry to say, it’s not much of a guidebook at all. You can use it to get general information about many (albeit by no means all) tourist destinations in the Yucatan, as well as some pointers to hotels and restaurants – but the book is pretty much devoid of any of the practical information you need to get around from city to city and site to site. You can use it to get an idea of what towns/sites you want to hit during your trip, but if you plan to do any traveling at all, you will need a book with more practical information – even if just to point you to where the tourist office is, so that you can ask them how to get to your next stop. The book has virtually no maps, no information about opening hours or admission prices and no information as to distances or traveling times, for example. Moreover, what information is in the book is truly “hidden” within its very badly organized pages. It also doesn’t appear to be comprehensive – I’m particularly interested in finding information about cenotes we can visit – but it doesn’t include very much.
True, this is a 2003 guide – but the issue is not with how up-to-date the information is, but by what is presented and how. And it’s not the fault of the writer either – I have an older edition of Hidden San Francisco and Northern California and it suffers from the same bad-organization problems. I am sure that the lattest edition is just as frustrating.
All this said, and until I became frustrated, I did enjoy reading the book. I’d been furious if I had actually paid money for it, though. I would definitely not take it with me to Mexico.
Yesterday, I ordered Moon Yucatan Peninsula (it’s the 2007 edition, a new edition is coming out soon). I haven’t looked at the book, so I have no idea how it is, but I used the 1990 edition as a resource when I traveled the region writing the Yucatan chapter for the Berkeley Guide to Mexico right after college, and I LOVED the book. Back then, it included probably 90% of the places there were to see in the Yucatan, and the ones it didn’t include weren’t that significant. What I don’t remember is how good its practical information was. I researched all the practical information myself (of course) so I didn’t really have to rely on the book so much. We’ll see when it arrives.

For some reason, I love reading about expeditions to Everest. I loved “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer (an awesome writer) and enjoyed “The Other Side of Everest: Climbing the North Face Through the Killer Storm” by Matt Dickinson and “Doctor on Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World – A Personal Account of the 1996 Disaster” by Kenneth Kamler. “Climbing High : A Woman’s Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy” by Lene Gammelgaard wasn’t as good, but I didn’t have any major complaints about it. “High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed’ by Michael Kodas just plain sucked.
It was an interesting subject: how Everest has become so busy and commercialized that it has attracted all sorts of crime and unethical behavior. Injured, overtired or confused climbers are often left for dead by others trying to make it to the summit of the mountain and back. Under-equipped climbers steal provisions, equipment and in particularly oxygen bottles from others, severely risking the lives of the victims. Sherpas (who really come up horrible in this book) demand more money to continue mid-way through the climbs and to rescue injured climbers, attack them, leave them for dead (while still alive) and also steal equipment. Guides abandon their clients and participate in side-business of dubious morality of not legality. One particularly dangerous one is the refilling of oxygen bottles, often without informing the buyers of the fact – refilled bottles have a high failure rate, and at 8,000 meters a failing oxygen bottle may very well kill you. And then there is prostitution, gambling, overdrinking, drug and steroid use and other vices of civilization.
It was very interesting to find out all of this, and if I ever had dreamt of climbing Everest (which I haven’t, because I do have some grip on reality), this book definitely would have made think twice about it.
The problem with the book, however, is that it was very badly written and organized even worse. There are two major story lines in the book – an account of the author’s own 2004 Connecticut Expedition and the account of an elderly Bolivian climber who died on Everest and the alleged responsibility of his guide. These are told more or less in chronological order and, while ultimately boring, they are easy enough to follow. Other stories, however, appear disjointedly throughout the book. In some of them, the author expresses what seems to be sincere admiration for specific individuals, in others, those same individuals are torn apart. People do have good and bad sides, but there is too little character development to understand what these people are really like.
The story of the disintegration of the Connecticut team is also not very understandable. The author suggests that members of the team turned against other members suddenly, but there is little explanation about how that came about. He seems more interested in vilifying his perceived enemies than in finding an objective place from which to look at the expedition. Jon Krakauer he is not.
He also can’t write like Krakauer, it’s suprising to me that he is a professional writer (a journalist), and while he uses the tools of storytelling, he doesn’t do it successfully.
In sum, as far as Everest books go, this is way down the pile.