An ancient secret. A lost city. A treasure that could change the world. In search of a Spanish galleon in the Caribbean, archaeologist Finn Ryan and her partner Lord Billy Pilgrim find evidence of a lost Aztec Codex. The invaluable book created by 15th-century explorer and accused heretic Hernan Cortez is said to reveal the secret location of the lost City of Gold. But they are not alone in their quest. Also on the trail is the head of a menacing religious cadre who'd kill to get it first, and a sociopathic billionaire with his own sinister motives. But while running for their lives, Finn and Billy come upon a more explosive secret that will take them from the Yucatan jungles to the Sonoran Desert, where the stakes are life and death.

Heresy studies is a new interdisciplinary, supra-religious, and humanist field of study that focuses on borderlands of dogma, probes the intersections between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and explores the realms of dissent in religion, art, and literature. Free from confessional agendas and tolerant of both religious and non-religious perspectives, heresy studies fulfill an important gap in scholarly inquiry and artistic production. Divided into four parts, the volume explores intersections between heresy and modern literature, it discusses intricacies of medieval heresies, it analyzes issues of heresy in contemporary theology, and it demonstrates how heresy operates as an artistic stimulant. Rather than treating matters of heresy, blasphemy, unbelief, dissent, and non-conformism as subjects to be shunned or naively championed, the essays in this collection chart a middle course, energized by the dynamics of heterodoxy, dissent, and provocation, yet shining a critical light on both the challenges and the revelations of disruptive kinds of thinking and acting.

Gary Jennings's Aztec is the extraordinary story of the last and greatest native civilization of North America. Told in the words of one of the most robust and memorable characters in modern fiction, Mixtli-Dark Cloud, Aztec reveals the very depths of Aztec civilization from the peak and feather-banner splendor of the Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlan to the arrival of Hernán Cortás and his conquistadores, and their destruction of the Aztec empire. The story of Mixtli is the story of the Aztecs themselves---a compelling, epic tale of heroic dignity and a colossal civilization's rise and fall. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Aztec Heresy A mystery that spans the past A conspiracy that lives on in the heart of an ancient order... Army Ranger Lt. Col. John Holliday had resigned himself to ending his career teaching at West Point. When his uncle passes away, Holliday discovers a medieval sword-wrapped in Adolf Hitler's personal battle standard. But when someone burns down his uncle's house in an attempt to retrieve the sword, Holliday realizes that he's being drawn into a war that has been fought for centuries-a war in which he may be the next casualty.

In this important contribution to post-colonial theological studies, the argument is made that religious practices and teachings imposed on colonized peoples are transmuted in the process of colonization. The very theological discourse that is foisted on the colonized people becomes for them, a liberating possibility through a process of theological transformation from within. This is offered as an explanation of the mechanisms which have brought about the emergence of the current post-colonial consciousness. However, what is distinctive and unique about this treatment is that it pursues these questions with two basic assumptions. The first is that the religious expressions of colonized people bear the outward marks of the hegemonic theological discourse imposed on them, but change its content through a process called "transfiguration." The second is that the crises of Western Christianity since the Reformation and the Conquest of the Americas enunciates the very process through which post-colonial religious hybridity is made possible. This book unfolds in three parts. The first (the "pre-text") deals with the colonial practice of the missionary enterprise using Latin America as a case study. The second (the "text") presents the crisis of Western modernity as interpreted by insiders and outsiders of the modern project. The third (the "con-text") analyses some discursive post-colonial practices that are theologically grounded even when used in discourses that are not religious. Some of the questions that this project engages are: Is there a post-colonial understanding of sin and evil? How can we understand eschatology in post-colonial terms? What does it mean to be the church in a post-colonial framework? For those interested in the intersection of theology and post-colonial studies, this book will be important reading.

The Spanish conquest of Mexico was a remarkable military expedition that had a huge impact on the history of the world. Hernán Cortés led the expedition, the aim of which was the addition of Mexico to the Spanish Empire, and the extraction of Aztec riches. Following the appearance of portents, the Aztecs were expecting a catastrophe in 1519, and the Spanish invasion fulfilled this expectation. Although they fought fiercely to the end, the Aztec civilisation was doomed, and the face of Mexico would be changed for ever. This book examines the campaign, but also the lives, training and experience of the men on both sides: the Spanish conquerors and their opponents, the exotic Aztecs, who were fighting for their lives and their civilisation. Contains material peviously published in Essential Histories 60, Warrior 32 and Warrior 40.

This monograph is a review of the present state of knowledge of the relationships and consequences of over 25 centuries of interactions between the Amerindian and Asean Circum-Pacific regions. A fascinating, special case of previous work by two Asianists on similar themes of the Euro-Asian Continental land mass, providing the theoretical framework within which the complexities of cultural cross-pattern are studied.The subjects dicussed individually begin with the elements of recording and writing, continuing through the arts, religion, folklore and an eventual examination of the natural sciences and technology. There is also a discussion in this context of evidence from and the relevance of ethno-botany, ethno-zoology and ethno-helminthology.The underlying thesis of this volume is the relative independence and powerfully original development and evolution of Amerindian cultures and societies in Central and South America.