Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs
Elizabeth Boone has written a book that is remarkable in many ways, a work that historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians will realize they have been in need of once they have delved into it.  In an unparalleled effort, she takes the reader through dozens of central Mexican and Oaxacan manuscripts, broadly speaking, ‘the pictorial histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs,’ according to her subtitle; most of them were made just before the Spanish invasion of Mexico in 1519, or in the first few generations after.  At the end, the reader not only knows what is in any given manuscript, according to Boone’s reading, but also how to find one’s own way through a manuscript. (Mary MillerHispanic American Historical Review2001-02-00)