A Beautiful World: Ancient texts reveal Aztecs’ history in their own words in Camilla Townsend's Latest Book

Camilla Townsend’s new book, "Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs," documents the story of the Aztecs from an entirely new perspective, that of the Aztecs themselves. Townsend is a history professor at Rutgers University and the author of numerous historical books. She also happens to be an expert in the Nahuatl language of the ancient Aztecs.

“I wanted to write a book about Aztec history,” Townsend said, “because even though there are lots of books out there, and have been for many years, they’re all based on Spanish sources and give us a sense of the Aztecs as brutal people really, truly savages. In fact, they were not. They were human beings just like the rest of us.”

Townsend took ancient Aztec scripts, which had been collected and archived but never fully translated, and compiled selections in her book, "Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.” The title is taken from the Aztec belief that the world has been made and remade five times, and that we are currently living under the “Fifth Sun,” which began a few thousand years ago.