During his long academic career, the Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin has published numerous books and articles, creating a body of work that has radically transformed our understanding of Mesoamerica. However, only a handful of his works have been translated into English, so the University Press of Colorado's recent publication of The Myth of Quetzalcoatl, López Austin's first masterpiece, meticulously translated by Russ Davidson and Guilhem Olivier, is cause for celebration. Written as the author's master's thesis, the work was published in 1973 by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México as Hombre-Dios: Religión y política en el mundo náhuatl. As stated by its original title, the book focused on what López Austin termed the “man-god,” a multifaceted, enigmatic, and pivotal Mesoamerican personage who characteristically straddles the worlds of history and myth and who finds his most illustrious representative in the figure of Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, ruler of...
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