“The Popol Vuh, the Quiche Maya book of creation, is one of the extraordinary documents of the human imagination and the most important text in the native languages of the Americas. It begins with the deeds of Maya gods in the darkness of a primeval sea and ends with the radiant splendor of the Maya lords who founded the Quiche kingdom in the Guatemalan highlands. Originally written in Maya hieroglyphs, it was transcribed in the Spanish alphabet in the sixteenth century. This is the first unabridged English edition of the work, in Dennis Tedlock’s widely praised translation, with a full introduction and commentaries on the text.”

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Paperback: 380 pages

One of the lasting contributions of Frazer’s Golden Bough is that it confers on the reader the ability to decipher John Boorman films. With the complete text running over 8,000 pages (go to the library for all 22 volumes) and the average abridgement running at least 1,000, it is clearly one of the weightiest tomes around. Frazer’s encyclopedic display of fertility religions, taboo, and primitive folk magic and customs is an unparalleled record of a vanished past. One example that particularly stands out is the rites described surrounding Attis and Cybele regarding autocastration (you’ll never look at a pine cone in quite the same way again). Frazer’s study isn’t all serious and dour. He relates a story of the acquisition of sacred kingship, the practice by which the most virile man kills his predecessor in hand-to-hand combat, thereby ensuring the fecundity of crops. Frazer then digresses to tell how the emperor Caligula (the secular Roman ruler) sent the best gladiator from the arena to kill Diana’s King of Nemi (the religious Roman ruler) so that he could further extend his power. Contemporary portrayals of indigenous peoples being noble à la Rousseau are nowhere to be found in The Golden Bough. Frazer is clearly Victorian in both his attitudes of superiority toward them and his desire to catalog the minutest aspects of their lives. MM

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Paperback: 864 pages

Upon their 1947 discovery in Palestine, the scrolls caused an uproar in the academic community because they presented a very different picture of Christ and Christians in the first centuries of Christianity from what was then generally believed. Some scholars advocated free interpretation of the scrolls, others did not, and the official interpretation of the scrolls was plagued with inconsistencies. Facsimiles of the scrolls were not released generally until the Huntington Library in Pasadena, Calif. decided to break conformity and released copies. MET

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Paperback: 288 pages
Illustrated

White supremacists Richard Butler and Robert Miles had a dream slightly different from Martin Luther King’s. A new Aryan state would be created, comprising the land now known as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Butler moved from California to Hayden Lake, Idaho, and built his Aryan Nations Compound. It conformed nicely with his vision: “A sign on the sentry box read “Whites Only.” The office walls sported pictures of Adolf Hitler, swastikas, and other Nazi memorabilia. A bust of Hitler’s head was kept inside a glass cabinet. In the chapel was another portrait of Hitler with a caption: “When I Come back, No More Mr. Nice Guy.” So there appears to now be a race as to who will appear first: Christ or Hitler. The book’s content is extremely comprehensive and offers interesting descriptions of most of the so-called right-wing fringe groups existing in America today. JB

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Hardback: 288 pages

“See the Seven Wonders of Roadside America from South of the Border to the Cypress Knee Museum… special coast-to-coast Elvis and Atomic tours… leapin’ gators, divin’ horses, bitin’ snakes and performin’ chimps from Gatorama to Parrot Jungle… two Stonehenges, the London Bridge, and a Polynesian Paradise right here in the USA… the TV homes of Fred Flintstone, the Cartwrights and Hee-Haw, open to the public… the 25 most unusual items on display in American museums, from Einstein’s Brain to Edison’s Last Breath… An eminently useful guide to the beautifully tasteless and wonderfully weird leisure-time landscape of America’s tourist attractions.”

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Paperback: 288 pages
Illustrated