In 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan, magnificent centre of the Aztec empire, fell to the Spaniards and their Indian allies. Inga Clendinnen's account of the Aztecs recreates the culture of that city in its last unthreatened years. It provides a vividly dramatic analysis of Aztec ceremony as performance art, binding the key experiences and concerns of social existence in the late imperial city to the mannnered violence of their ritual killings. 'Inga Clendinnen's vivid study Aztecs begins and ends with the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, the glistening lake city which rose like a dream to the Spaniards who first saw it ... It takes us deep into the heart of Mexican or Aztec society.' The Times Literary Supplement '... a fascinating, thought-provoking book.Aztecs offers a gripping account of an alien society and thus enlarges our apprehension of the sheer diversity of human culture.' London Review of Books 'This is an outstanding book, as rich in its reconstruction of social details as in its lucid analyses of the 'interior architecture' of the Aztec world.' The Times Higher Education Supplement