In communities throughout precontact Mesoamerica, calendar priests and diviners relied on pictographic almanacs to predict the fate of newborns, to guide people in choosing marriage partners and auspicious wedding dates, to know when to plant and harvest crops, and to be successful in many of life's activities. As the Spanish colonized Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century, they made a determined effort to destroy these books, in which the Aztec and neighboring peoples recorded their understanding of the invisible world of the sacred calendar and the cosmic forces and supernaturals that adhered to time. Today, only a few of these divinatory codices survive. Visually complex, esoteric, and strikingly beautiful, painted books such as the famous Codex Borgia and Codex Borbonicus still serve as portals into the ancient Mexican calendrical systems and the cycles of time and meaning they encode. In this comprehensive study, Elizabeth Hill Boone analyzes the entire extant corpus of Mexican divinatory codices and offers a masterful explanation of the genre as a whole. She introduces the sacred, divinatory calendar and the calendar priests and diviners who owned and used the books. Boone then explains the graphic vocabulary of the calendar and its prophetic forces and describes the organizing principles that structure the codices. She shows how they form almanacs that either offer general purpose guidance or focus topically on specific aspects of life, such as birth, marriage, agriculture and rain, travel, and the forces of the planet Venus. Boone also tackles two major areas of controversy—the great narrative passage in the Codex Borgia, which she freshly interprets as a cosmic narrative of creation, and the disputed origins of the codices, which, she argues, grew out of a single religious and divinatory system.

PRAISE FOR THE LONG GOOD BUY: "Oppenheimer offers brilliant insights, sage advice and entertaining anecdotes. Anyone wishing to understand how financial markets behave – and misbehave – should read this book now." Stephen D. King, economist and author of Grave New World: The End of Globalisation, the Return of History "Peter has always been one of the masters of dissecting financial markets performance into an understandable narrative, and in this book, he pulls together much of his great thinking and style from his career, and it should be useful for anyone trying to understand what drives markets, especially equities." Lord Jim O'Neill, Chair, Chatham House "A deeply insightful analysis of market cycles and their drivers that really does add to our practical understanding of what moves markets and long-term investment returns." Keith Skeoch, CEO, Standard Life Aberdeen "This book eloquently blends the author's vast experience with behavioural finance insights to document and understand financial booms and busts. The book should be basic reading for any student of finance." Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics, London Business School "This is an excellent book, capturing the insights of a leading market practitioner within the structured analytical framework he has developed over many years. It offers a lively and unique perspective on how markets work and where they are headed." Huw Pill, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School "The Long Good Buy is an excellent introduction to understanding the cycles, trends and crises in financial markets over the past 100 years. Its purpose is to help investors assess risk and the probabilities of different outcomes. It is lucidly written in a simple logical way, requires no mathematical expertise and draws on an amazing collection of historical data and research. For me it is the best and most comprehensive introduction to the subject that exists." Lord Brian Griffiths, Chairman - Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, Oxford

Barnett presents the first in-depth analysis in English of the pioneer of long cycle analysis, N.D. Kondratiev (1892-1938), who was a key policy adviser to the Soviet government in the early part of the 1920s. Kondratiev developed a market-led industrialization strategy for the USSR, in direct opposition to Stalin's centrally-planned industrialization programme, and was the director of the Conjuncture Institute, a centre for the study of business cycles and forecasting between 1920 and 1928. It was within the Conjuncture Institute that Kondratiev developed his analysis of long cycles. Barnett covers all aspects of Kondratiev's work.

"Secular Cycles elaborates and expands upon the demographic-structural theory first advanced by Jack Goldstone, which provides an explanation of long-term oscillations. This book tests that theory's specific and quantitative predictions by tracing the dynamics of population numbers, prices and real wages, elite numbers and incomes, state finances, and sociopolitical instability. Turchin and Nefedov study societies in England, France, and Russia during the medieval and early modern periods, and look back at the Roman Republic and Empire. Incorporating theoretical and quantitative history, the authors examine a specific model of historical change and, more generally, investigate the utility of the dynamical systems approach in historical applications."--BOOK JACKET.